5Z(oQ 



<{f% , ■ wz\ 



W> 4 



.Z-r- 







BEQUEST OF 
ALBERT ADSIT CLEMONS 
(Not available for exchange) 



Jiriel Booklets 



2UO titles, Comprising the most famous 
World's Classics, including Poems, 
Dramas, Stories, Essays, Philosophy, 
Wit and Wisdom. 



Each complete in itself. 
Send for Descriptive Catalogue. 



Xils 



KuslUn 



John Ruskin 



mm& 



UbC Unit 



Sesame anfc Xilies 

Ubree lectures by 

3obn IRusfein 

t. Ot Ninas' {Treasuries 

2. ©t (Sheens' (Barrens 

3. ©t tbe /foBsterg of Xife 

Keprtnte© from tbe XTblro finflltsb EDition 




flew H?orfc ano lonoon 

<&. p. putnam'0 Son* 

Ube ftnfcfcerbocfeer prcfs 



CO 

At 



7 



Bequest 
Albert Ad.3it Clemona 
Aug. 24, 19 
(Not available fo 



CONTENTS 

Preface— First Edition I 

Preface 15 

Lecture I.— Of Kings' Treasuries ... 51 

IyECTURE n. — Of Queens' Gardens . . . 14a 
Lecture III.— The Mystery of I,d?e and its 



PREFACE— FIRST EDITION. 

A PASS AGE in the one hundred and twelfth 
page of this book, referring to Alpine 
travellers, will fall harshy on the reader's ear 
since it has been sorrowfully enforced by the 
deaths on Mont Cervin. I leave it, nevertheless, 
as it stood, for I do not now write unadvisedly, 
and think it wrong to cancel what has once 
been thoughtfully said ; but it must not so re- 
main without a few added words. 

No blame ought to attach to the Alpine tour- 
ist for incurring danger. There is usually 
sufficient cause, and real reward, for all difficult 
work ; and even were it otherwise, some expe- 
rience of distinct peril, and the acquirement 
of habits of quick and calm action in its pres- 
ence, are necessary elements, at some period 
of life, in the formation of manly character. 
The blame of bribing guides into danger is a 



2 preface 

singular accusation, in behalf of a people who 
have made mercenary soldiers of themselves 
for centuries, without any one's thinking of 
giving their fidelity better employment : 
though, indeed, the piece of work they did at 
the gate of the Tuileries, however useless, was 
no unwise one ; and their lion of flawed molasse 
at Lucerne, worthless in point of art though it 
be, is nevertheless a better reward than much 
pay ; and a better ornament to the old town 
than the Schweizer Hof, or fiat new quay, for 
the promenade of those travellers who do not 
take guides into danger. The British public 
are, however, at home, so innocent of ever buy- 
ing their fellow-creatures' lives, that we may 
justly expect them to be punctilious abroad ! 
They do not, perhaps, often calculate how many 
souls flit annually, choked in fire-damp and sea- 
sand, from economically watched shafts, and 
economically manned ships ; nor see the fiery 
ghosts writhe up out of every scuttleful of cheap 
coals : nor count how many threads of girlish 
life are cut off and woven annually by painted 
Fates, into breadths of ball-dresses ; or soaked 



preface 3 

away, like rotten hemp-fibre, in the inlet of 
Cocytus which overflows the Grassmarket where 
flesh is as grass. We need not, it seems to me, 
loudly blame any one for paying a guide to take 
a brave walk with him. Therefore, gentlemen 
of the Alpine Club, as much danger as you care 
to face, by all means ; but, if it please you, not 
so much talk of it. The real ground of repre- 
hension of Alpine climbing is that, with less 
cause, it excites more vanity than any other 
athletic skill. A good horseman knows what 
it has cost to make him one ; everybody else 
knows it too, and knows that he is one ; he 
need not ride at a fence merely to show his seat. 
But credit for practice in climbing can only be 
claimed after success, which, though perhaps 
accidental and unmerited, must yet be attained 
at all risks, or the shame of defeat borne with 
no evidence of the difficulties encountered. 
At this particular period, also, the distinction 
obtainable by first conquest of. a peak is as 
tempting to a traveller as the discovery of a new 
element to a chemist, or of a new species to a 
naturalist. Vanity is never so keenly excited 



4 preface 

as by competitions which involve chance ; the 
course of science is continually arrested, and 
its nomenclature fatally confused, by the eager- 
ness of even wise and able men to establish 
their priority in an unimportant discovery, or 
obtain vested right to a syllable in a deformed 
word ; and many an otherwise sensible person 
will risk his life for the sake of a line in future 

guide-books, to the fact that " horn was 

first ascended by Mr. X. in the year ■" ; — 

never reflecting that of all the lines in the page, 
the one he has thus wrought for will be pre- 
cisely the least interesting to the reader. 

It is not therefore strange, however much to 
be regretted, that while no gentleman boasts in 
other cases of his sagacity or his courage — while 
no good soldier talks of the charge he led, nor 
any good sailor of the helm he held, — every 
man among the Alps seems to lose his senses 
and modesty with the fall of the barometer, and 
returns from his Nephelo-coccygia brandishing 
his ice-axe in everybody's face. Whatever the 
Alpine Club have done, or may yet accomplish, 
is a sincere thirst for mountain knowledge, and 



preface 5 

in happy sense of youthful strength and play 
of animal spirit, they have done, and will do, 
wisely and well ; but whatever they are urged to 
by mere sting of competition and itch of praise, 
they will do, as all vain things must be done 
forever, foolishly and ill. It is a strange proof 
of that absence of any real national love of 
science, of which I have had occasion to speak 
in the text, that no entire survey of the Alps 
has yet been made by properly qualified men ; 
and that, except of the chain of Chamouni, no 
accurate map exists, nor any complete geologi- 
cal section even of that. But Mr. Reilly's sur- 
vey of that central group, and the generally 
accurate information collected in the guide- 
book published by the Club, are honorable 
results of English adventure ; and it is to be 
hoped that the continuance of such work will 
gradually put an end to the vulgar excitement 
which looked upon the granite of the Alps only 
as an unoccupied advertisement wall for chalk- 
ing names upon. 

Respecting the means of accomplishing such 
work with least risk, there was a sentence in 



6 preface 

the article of our leading public journal, which 
deserves, and requires expansion. 

"Their" (the Alpine Club's) "ropes must 
not break." 

Certainly not ! nor any one else's ropes, if 
they may be rendered unbreakable by honesty 
of make ; seeing that more lives hang by them 
on moving than on motionless seas. The rec- 
ords of the last gale at the Cape may teach 
us that economy in the manufacture of cables 
is not always a matter of exultation ; and, on 
the whole, it might even be well in an honest 
country, sending out, and up and down, various 
lines east and west, that nothing should break ; 
banks, — words, — nor dredging tackle. 

Granting, however, such praise and such 
sphere of exertion as we thus justly may, to the 
spirit of adventure, there is one consequence 
of it, coming directly under my own cognizance, 
of which I cannot but speak with utter regret, 
— the loss, namely, of all real understanding 
of the character and beauty of Switzerland, by 
the country's being now regarded as half water- 
in or-place, half gymnasium. It is indeed true 



pretace 7 

that, under the influence of the pride which 
gives poignancy to the sensations which oth- 
ers cannot share with us (and a not unjustifia- 
ble zest to the pleasure which we have worked 
for), an ordinary traveller will usually observe 
and enjoy more on a difficult excursion than 
on an easy one ; and more in objects to which 
he is unaccustomed than in those with which 
he is familiar. He will notice with extreme 
interest that snow is white on the top of a hill 
in June, though he would have attached little 
importance to the same peculiarity in a wreath 
at the bottom of a hill in January. He will 
generally find more to admire in a cloud under 
his feet, that in one over his head ; and, op- 
pressed by the monotony of a sky which is 
prevalently blue, will derive extraordinary 
satisfaction from its approximation to black. 
Add to such grounds of delight the aid given 
to the effect of whatever is impressive in the 
scenery of the high Alps, by the absence of 
ludicrous or degrading concomitants ; and it 
ceases to be surprising that Alpine excursion- 
ists should be greatly pleased, or that they 



8 preface 

should attribute their pleasure to some true 
and increased apprehension of the nobleness 
of the natural scenery. But no impression 
can be more false. The real beauty of the 
Alps is to be seen, and seen only, where all 
may see it, the child, the cripple, and the man 
of gray hairs. There is more true loveliness in 
a single glade of pasture shadowed by pine, or 
gleam of rocky brook, or inlet of unsullied 
lake among the lower Bernese and Savoy- 
ard hills, than in the entire field of jagged 
gneiss which crests the central ridge from the 
Shreckhorn to the Viso. The valley of Cluse, 
through which unhappy travellers consent 
now to be invoiced, packed in baskets like 
fish, so only that they may cheaply reach, in 
the feverous haste which has become the law 
of their being, the glen of Chamouni, whose 
every lovely foreground rock has now been 
broken up to build hotels for them, contains 
more beauty in half a league of it, than the en- 
tire valley they have devastated, and turned into 
a casino, did in its uninjured pride; and that 
passage of the Jura by Olten (between Basle 



preface 9 

and Lucerne), which is by the modern tourist 
triumphantly effected through a tunnel in ten 
minutes, between two piggish trumpet grunts 
proclamatory of the ecstatic transit, used to 
show from every turn and sweep of its winding 
ascent, up which one sauntered, gathering 
wild-flowers, for half a happy day, diviner as- 
pects of the distant Alps than ever were 
achieved by toil of limb, or won by risk of 
life. 

There is indeed a healthy enjoyment both in 
engineers' work, and in school-boy's play ; 
the making and mending of roads has its true 
enthusiasms, and I have still pleasure enough 
in mere scrambling to wonder not a little at 
the supreme gravity with which apes exercise 
their superior powers in that kind, as if profit- 
less to them. But neither macadamization, nor 
tunnelling, nor rope ladders, will ever enable 
one human creature to understand the pleas- 
ure in natural scenery felt by Theocritus or 
Virgil ; and I believe the athletic health of 
our school-boys might be made perfectly con- 
sistent with a spirit of more courtesy and rev- 



io preface 

erence, both for men and things, than is recog- 
nizable in the behavior of modern youth. 
Some year or two back, I was staying at the 
Montanvert to paint Alpine roses, and went 
every day to watch the budding of a favorite 
bed, which was rounding into faultless bloom 
beneath a cirque of rock, high enough, as 
I hoped, and close enough, to guard it from 
rude eyes and plucking hands. But, 

" Tra erto e piano era un sentiero ghembo, 
Che ne condusse in fianco del a lacca," 

and on the day it reached the fulness of its 
rubied fire, I was standing near when it was 
discovered by a forager on the flanks of a 
travelling school of English and German lads. 
He shouted to his companions, and they 
swooped down upon it ; threw themselves into 
it, rolled over and over in it, shrieked, hal- 
looed, and fought in it, trampled it down, and 
tore it up by the roots ; breathless at last with 
rapture of ravage, they fixed the brightest of 
the remnant blossoms of it in their caps, and 
went on their way rejoicing. 



{preface n 

They left me much to think upon ; partly 
respecting the essential power of the beauty 
which could so excite them, and partly respect- 
ing the character of the youth which could 
only be excited to destroy. But the incident 
was a perfect type of that irreverence for nat- 
ural beauty with respect to which I said in the 
text, at the place already indicated: "You 
make railroads of the aisles of the cathedrals 
of the earth, and 'eat off their altars." For in- 
deed all true lovers of natural beauty hold it in 
reverence so deep, that they would as soon 
think of climbing the pillars of the choir 
Beauvais for a gymnastic exercise, as of making 
a play-ground of Alpine snow : and they would 
not risk one hour of their joy among the hill 
meadows on a May morning, for the fame or 
fortune of having stood on every pinnacle of 
the silver temple, and beheld the kingdoms of 
the world from it. Love of excitement is so far 
from being love of beauty, that it ends always 
in a joy in its exact reverse ; joy in destruction, 
—as of my poor roses, — or in actual details of 
leath ; until, in the literature of the day, 



12 pretace 

"nothing is too dreadful, or too trivial, for the 
greed of the public." * And in politics, apathy, 
irreverence, and lust of luxury go hand in 
hand, until the best solemnization which can 
be conceived for the greatest event in modern 
European history, the crowning of Florence 
capital of Italy, is the accursed and ill-omened 
folly of casting down her old walls, and sur- 
rounding her with a " boulevard " ; and this at 
the very time when every stone of her ancient 
cities is more precious to her than the gems of 
a Urim breastplate, and when every nerve of 
her heart and brain should have been strained 
to redeem her guilt and fulfil her freedom. It 
is not by making roads round Florence, but 
through Calabria, that she should begin her 
Roman causeway work again ; and her fate 
points her march, not on boulevards by Arno, 
but waist-deep in the lagoons at Venice. Not 
yet, indeed, but five years of patience and 
discipline of her youth would accomplish her 
power, and sweep the martello towers from the 

* Pall Mall Gazette, August 15th, article on the For- 
ward murders. 



preface 13 

cliffs of Verona, and the ramparts from the 
marsh of Mestre. But she will not teach her 
youth that discipline on boulevards. 

Strange, that while we both, French and 
English, can give lessons in war, we only cor- 
rupt other nations when they imitate either our 
pleasures or our industries. We English, had 
we loved Switzerland indeed, should have 
striven to elevate, but not to disturb, the sim- 
plicity of her people, by teaching them the 
sacredness of their fields and waters, the honor 
of their pastoral and burgher life, and the 
fellowship in glory of the gray turreted walls 
round their ancient cities, with their cottages 
in their fair groups by the forest and lake. 
Beautiful, indeed, upon the mountains, had 
been the feet of any who had spoken peace to 
their children ; — who had taught those princely 
peasants to remember their lineage, and their 
league with the rocks of the field ; that so they 
might keep their mountain waters pure, and their 
mountain paths peaceful, and their traditions 
of domestic life holy. We have taught them 
(incapable by circumstances and position of 



i4 preface 

ever becoming a great commercial nation) all 
the foulness of the modern lust of wealth, 
without its practical intelligences ; and we have 
developed exactly the weakness of their tem- 
perament by which they are liable to meanest 
ruin. Of the ancient architecture and most 
expressive beauty of their country there is now 
little vestige left ; and it is one of the few rea- 
sons which console me for the advance of life, 
that I am old enough to remember the time 
when the sweet waves of the Reuss and Limmat 
(now foul with the refuse of manufacture) were 
as crystalline as the heaven above them, when 
her pictured bridges and embattled towers ran 
unbroken round Lucerne ; when the Rhone 
flowed in deep-green, softly dividing currents 
round the wooded ramparts of Geneva ; and 
when from the marble roof of the western vault 
of Milan, I could watch the Rose of Italy flush 
in the first morning light, before a human foot 
had sullied its summit, or the reddening dawn 
on its rocks taken shadow of sadness from the 
crimson which long ago stained the ripples of 
Otterburn. 




PREFACE. 

I. Being now fifty-one years old, and little 
likely to change my mind hereafter on any im- 
portant subject of thought (unless through 
weakness of age), I wish to publish a connected 
series of such parts of my works as now seem to 
me right, and likely to be of permanent use. 
In doing so I shall omit much, but not attempt 
to mend what I think worth reprinting. A 
young man necessarily writes otherwise than 
an old one, and it would be worse than wasted 
time to try to recast the juvenile language : nor 
is it to be thought that I am ashamed even of 
what I cancel ; for great part of my earlier work 
was rapidly written for temporary purposes, and 
is now unnecessary, though true, even to truism. 
What I wrote about religion was, on the con- 
trary, painstaking and, I think, forcible, as 
compared with most religious writing ; espe 



16 preface 

cially in its frankness and fearlessness : but it 
was wholly mistaken ; for I had been educated 
in the doctrines of a narrow sect, and had read 
history as obliquely as sectarians necessarily 
must. 

Mingled among these either unnecessary or 
erroneous statements, I find, indeed, some that 
might be still of value ; but these, in my 
earlier books, disfigured by affected language, 
partly through the desire to be thought a fine 
writer, and partly, as in the second volume 
of "Modern Painters," in the notion of re- 
turning as far as I could to what I thought the 
better style of old English literature, especially 
to that of my then favorite, in prose, Richard 
Hooker. 

II. For these reasons, though, as respects 
either art, policy, or morality as distinct from 
religion, I not only still hold, but would even 
wish strongly to re-affirm the substance of what 
I said in my earliest books, I shall reprint 
scarcely any thing in this series out of the first 
and second volumes of "Modern Painters"; 
and shall omit much of the "Seven Lamps" 



preface 17 

and "Stones of Venice": but all my books 
written within the last fifteen years will be 
republished without change, as new editions 
of them, are called for, with here and there 
perhaps an additional note, and having their 
text divided, for convenient reference, into 
paragraphs consecutive through each volume. 
I shall also throw together the shorter frag- 
ments that bear on each other, and fill in with 
such unprinted lectures or studies as seem to 
me worth preserving, so as to keep the volumes, 
on an average, composed of about a hundred 
leaves each. 

III. The first book of which a new edition is 
required chances to be "Sesame and Lilies," to 
which I add a lecture given in Ireland on a subject 
closely connected with that of the book itself. 
I am glad that it should be the first of the com- 
plete series, for many reasons ; though in now 
looking over these two lectures, I am painfully 
struck by the waste of good work in them. 
They cost me much thought, and much strong 
emotion ; but it was foolish to suppose that I 
could rouse my audiences in a little while to 



18 preface 

any sympathy with the temper into which I had 
brought myself by years of thinking over sub- 
jects full of pain ; while, if I missed my purpose 
at the time, it was little to be hoped I could at- 
tain it afterwards ; since phrases written for oral 
delivery become ineffective when quietly read. 
Yet I should only take away what good is in 
them if I tried to translate them into the la^ 
guage of books ; nor, indeed, could I at all have 
done so at the time of their delivery, my 
thoughts then habitually and impatiently put- 
ting themselves into forms fit only for emphatic 
speech : and thus I am startled in my review of 
them, to find that, though there is much (for- 
give me the impertinence) which seems to me 
accurately and energetically said, there is 
scarcely any thing put in a form to be gener- 
ally convincing, or even easily intelligible ; and 
I can well imagine a reader laying down the 
book without being at all moved by it, still less 
guided, to any definite course of action. 

I think, however, if I now say briefly and 
clearly what I mean my hearers to understand, 
and what I wanted, and still would fain have, 



preface 19 

them to do, there may afterwards be found 
some better service in the passionately written 
text. 

IV. The first lecture says, or tries to say, 
that, life being very short, and the quiet hours 
of it few, we ought to waste none of them in 
reading valueless books ; and that valuable 
books should, in a civilized country, be within 
the reach of every one, printed in excellent 
form, for a just price ; but not in any vile, vul-. 
gar, or, by reason of smallness of type, physi- 
cally injurious form, at a vile price. For we 
none of us need many books, and those which 
we need ought to be clearly printed, on the best 
paper, and strongly bound. And though we 
are, indeed, now, a wretched "and poverty- 
struck nation, and hardly able to keep soul and 
body together, still, as no person in decent cir- 
cumstances would put on his table confessedly 
bad wine, or bad meat, without being ashamed, 
so he need not have on his shelves ill-printed or 
loosely and wretchedly stitched books ; for, 
though few can be rich, yet every man who 
honestly exerts himself may, I think, still pro- 



20 preface 

vide, for himself and his family, good shoes, 
good gloves, strong harness for his cart or car- 
riage horses, and stout leather binding for his 
books. And I would urge upon every young 
man, as the beginning of his due and wise pro- 
vision for his household, to obtain as soon as he 
can, by the severest economy, a restricted, ser- 
viceable.and steadily — however slowly — increas- 
ing series of books for use through life ; mak- 
ing his little library, of all the furniture in his 
room, the most studied and decorative piece ; 
every volume having its assigned place, like a 
little statue in its niche, and one of the earliest 
and strictest lessons to the children of the house 
being how to turn the pages of their own liter- 
ary possessions lightly and deliberately, with no 
chance of tearing or dogs' ears. 

V. That is my notion of the founding of King's 
Treasuries ; and the first lecture is intended to 
show somewhat the use and preciousness of 
their treasures : but the two following ones have 
wider scope, being written in the hope of 
awakening the youth of England, so far as my 
poor words might have any power with them, 



preface 21 

to take some thought of the purpose of the life 
into which they- are entering, and the nature of 
the world they have to conquer. 

VI. These two lectures are fragmentary and 
ill-arranged, but not, I think, diffuse or much 
compressible. The entire gist and conclusion 
of them, however, is in the last six paragraphs, 
135 to the end, of the third lecture, which I 
would beg the reader to look over not once nor 
twice (rather than any part of the book), for 
they contain the best expression I have yet 
been able to put in words of what, so far as is 
within my power, I mean henceforth both to do 
myself, and to plead with all over whom I have 
any influence, to do also according to their 
means : the letters begun on the first day of 
this year, to the workmen of England, having 
the object of originating, if possible, this move- 
ment among them, in true alliance with what- 
ever trustworthy element of help they can find 
in the higher classes. After these paragraphs, 
let me ask you to read, by the fiery light of 
recent events, the fable at p. 230 (g 117), and 
then \\ 129-131 ; and observe my statement 



22 preface 

respecting the famine at Orissa is not rhetorical, 
but certified by official documents as within the 
truth. Five hundred thousand persons, at least, 
died by starvation in our British dominions, 
wholly in consequence of carelessness and want 
of forethought. Keep that well in your memory; 
and note it as the best possible illustration of 
modern political economy in true practice, and 
of the relations it has accomplished between 
Supply and Demand. Then begin the second 
lecture, and all will read clear enough, I think, 
to the end ; only, since that second lecture was 
written, questions have arisen respecting the 
education and claims of women which have 
greatly troubled simple minds and excited rest- 
less ones. I am sometimes asked my thoughts 
on this matter, and I suppose that some girl 
readers of the second lecture may it the end 
of it desire to be told summarily what I would 
have them do and desire in the present state of 
things. This, then, is what I would say to any 
girl who had confidence enough in me to be- 
lieve what I told her, or do what I ask her. 
VII. First, be quite sure of one thing, that, 



preface 23 

however much you may know, and whatever ad- 
vantages you may possess, and however good you 
may be, you have not been singled out, by the 
God who made you, from all the other girls in 
the world, to be especially informed respecting 
His own nature and character. You have not 
been born in a luminous point upon the sur- 
face of the globe, where a perfect theology 
might be expounded to you from your youth 
up, and where every thing you were taught 
would be true, and every thing that was en- 
forced upon you, right. Of all the insolent, all 
the foolish persuasions that by any chance 
could enter and hold your empty little heart, 
this is the proudest and foolish est, — that you 
have been so much the darling of the Heavens, 
and favorite of the Fates, as to be born in the 
very nick of time, and in the punctual place, 
when and where pure Divine truth had been 
sifted from the errors of the Nations ; and that 
your papa had been providentially disposed to 
buy a house in the convenient neighborhood of 
the steeple under which that Immaculate and 
final verity would be beautifully proclaimed. 



24 iDreface 

Do not think it, child ; it is not so. This, on 
the contrary, is the fact, — unpleasant you may 
think it ; pleasant, it seems to me, — that you, 
with all your pretty dresses, and dainty looks s 
and kindly thoughts, and saintly aspirations, 
are not one whit more thought of or loved by 
the great Maker and Master than any poot 
little red, black, or blue savage, running wild 
in the pestilent woods, or naked on the ho*, 
sands of the earth : and that, of the two, you 
probably know less about God than she does ; 
the only difference being that she thinks little 
of Him that is right, and you, much that is 
wrong. 

That, then, is the first thing to make sure of; 
— that you are not yet perfectly well informed 
on the most abstruse of all possible subjects, 
and that, if you care to behave with modesty 01 
propriety, you had better be silent about it. 

VIII. The second thing which you may make 
sure of is, that however good you may be, you 
have faults ; that however dull you may be, you 
can find out what some of them are ; and that 
however slight they may be, you had better 



preface 25 

make some — not too painful, but patient — effort 
to get quit of them. And so fir as you have 
confidence in me at all, trust me for this, that 
how many soever you may find or fancy your 
faults to be, there are only two that are of real 
consequence, — Idleness and Cruelty. Perhaps 
you may be proud. Well, we can get much 
good out of pride, if only it be not religious. 
Perhaps you may be vain : it is highly prob- 
able ; and very pleasant for the people who like 
to praise you. Perhaps you are a little envious: 
that is really very shocking ; but then — so is 
everybody else. Perhaps, also, you are a little 
malicious, which I am truly concerned to hear, 
but should probably only the more, if I knew 
you, enjoy your conversation. But whatever 
else you may be, you must not be useless, and 
you must not be cruel. If there is any one 
point which, in six thousand years of thinking 
about right and wrong, wise and good men have 
agreed upon, or successively by experience dis- 
covered, it is that God dislikes idle and cruel 
people more than any other ; — that His first 
order is, "Work while vou have light" ; and 



26 preface 

His second, ' ' Be merciful while you have 
mercy." 

"Work while you have light," especially 
while you have the light of morning. There 
are few things more wonderful to me than that 
old people never tell young ones how precious 
their youth is. They sometimes sentimentally 
regret their own earlier days ; sometimes pru- 
dently forget them ; often foolishly rebuke the 
young, often more foolishly indulge, often most 
foolishly thwart and restrain ; but scarcely ever 
warn or watch them. Remember, then, that I, 
at least, have warned you, that the happiness of 
your life, and its power, and its part and rank 
in earth or in heaven, depend on the way you 
pass your days now. They are not to be sad 
days ; far from that, the first duty of young 
people is to be delighted and delightful ; but 
they are to be in the deepest sense solemn days. 
There is no solemnity so deep, to a rightly 
thinking creature, as that of dawn. But not 
only in that beautiful sense, but in all their 
character and method, they are to be solemn 
days. Take your Latin dictionary, and look 



preface 27 

out " sollennis," and fix the sense of the word 
well in your mind, and remember that every 
day of your early life is ordaining irrevocably, 
for good or evil, the custom and practice of your 
soul ; ordaining either sacred customs of dear 
and lovely recurrence, or trenching deeper and 
deeper the furrows for seed of sorrow. Now s 
therefore, see that no day passes in which you 
do not make yourself a somewhat better creat- 
ure ; and in order to do that, find out, first, what 
you are now. Do not think vaguely about it ; 
take pen and paper, and write down as accurate 
a description of yourself as you can, with the 
date to it. If you dare not do so, find out why 
you dare not, and try to get strength of heart 
enough to look yourself fairly in the face, in 
mind as well as body. I do not doubt but that 
the mind is a less pleasant thing to look at than 
the face, and for that very reason it needs more 
looking at ; so always have two mirrors on your 
toilet table, and see that with proper care you 
dress body and mind before them daily. After 
the dressing is once over for the day, think no 
more about it : as your hair will blow about 



28 preface 

your ears, so your temper and thoughts will get 
ruffled with the day's work, and may need, 
sometimes, twice dressing ; but I don't want you 
to carry about a mental pocket-comb ; only to 
be smooth braided always in the morning. 

IX. Write down then, frankly, what you are, 
or, at least, what you think yourself, not dwell- 
ing upon those inevitable faults which I have 
just told you are of little consequence, and 
which the action of a right life will shake or 
smooth away ; but that you may determine to 
the best of your intelligence what you are good 
for and can be made into. You will find that 
the mere resolve not to be useless, and the 
honest desire to help other people, will, in the 
quickest and delicatest ways, improve yourself. 
Thus, from the beginning, consider all your ac- 
complishments as means of assistance to others; 
read attentively, in this volume, paragraphs 74, 
75, 19, and 79, and you will understand what I 
mean, with respect to languages and music. In 
music especially you will soon find what per- 
sonal benefit there is in being serviceable : it is 
probable that, however limited your powers, 



Ipreface 29 

you have voice and ear enough to sustain a note 
of moderate compass in a concerted piece; — 
that, then, is the first thing to make sure you 
can do. Get your voice disciplined and clear, 
and think only of accuracy ; never of effect or 
expression : if you have any soul worth expres- 
sing it will show itself in your singing ; but 
most likely there are very few feelings in you, 
at present, needing any particular expression ; 
and the one thing you have to do is to make a 
clear-voiced little instrument of yourself, which 
other people can entirely depend upon for the 
note wanted. So, in drawing, as soon as you 
can set down the right shape of any thing, and 
thereby explain its character to another person, 
or make the look of it clear and interesting to a 
child, you will begin to enjoy the art vividly for 
its own sake, and all your habits of mind and 
powers of memory will gain precision : but if 
you only try to make showy drawings for praise, 
or pretty ones for amusement, your drawing will 
have little or real interest for you, and no edu- 
cational power whatever. 

Then, besides this more delicate work, resolve 



30 preface 

to do every day some that is useful in the v. il 
gar sense. Learn first thoroughly the economy 
of the kitchen ; the good and bad qualities of 
every common article of food, and the simplest 
and best modes of their preparation ; when you 
have time, go and help in the cooking of poorer 
families, and show them how to make as much 
of every thing as possible, and how to make 
little, nice ; coaxing and tempting them into 
tidy and pretty ways, and pleading for well- 
folded table-cloths, however coarse, and for a 
flower or two out of the garden to strew on 
them. If you manage to get a clean table- 
cloth, bright plates on it, and a good dish in 
the middle, of your own cooking, you may ask 
leave to say a short grace ; and let your re- 
ligious ministries be confined to that much for 
the present. 

X. Again, let a certain part of your day (as 
little as you choose, but not to be broken in 
upon) be set apart for making strong and pretty 
dresses for the poor. Learn the sound qualities 
of all useful stuffs, and make every thing of the 
best you can get, whatever its price. I havp 



f>retace 31 

many reasons for desiring you to do this,— too 
many to be told just now, — trust me, and be 
sure you get every thing as good as can be ; 
and if, in the villainous state of modern trade, 
you cannot get it good at any price, buy its 
raw material, and set some of the poor women 
about you to spin and weave, till you have got 
stuff that can be trusted ; and then every day, 
make some little piece of useful clothing, sewn 
with your own fingers as strongly as it can be 
stitched ; and embroider it or otherwise beautify 
it moderately with fine needlework, such as a 
girl may be proud of having done. And accu- 
mulate these things by you until you hear of 
some honest persons in need of clothing, which 
may often too sorrowfully be ; and, even though 
you should be deceived, and give them to the 
dishonest, and hear of their being at once 
taken to the pawnbroker's, never mind that, 
for the pawnbroker must sell them to some one 
who has need of them. That is no business of 
yours ; what concerns you is only that when 
you see a half-naked child, you should have 
good and fresh clothes to give it, if its parents 



32 favetnce 

will let it be taught to wear them. If they will 
not, consider how they came to be of such a 
mind, which it will be wholesome for you be- 
yond most subjects of inquiry to ascertain. 
And after you have gone on doing this a little 
while, you will begin to understand the mean- 
ing of at least one chapter of your Bible, 
Proverbs xxxi., without need of any labored 
comment, sermon, or meditation. 

XI. In these, then (and of course in all 
minor ways besides, that you can discover in 
your own household), you must be to the best, 
of your strength usefully employed during the 
greater part of the day, so that you may be 
able at the end of it to say, as proudly as any 
peasant, that you have not eaten the bread of 
idleness. Then, secondly, I said, you are not 
to be cruel. Perhaps you think there is no 
chance of your being so ; and indeed I hope it 
is not likely that you should be deliberately 
unkind to any creature ; but unless you are 
deliberately kind to every creature, you will 
often be cruel to many. Cruel, partly through 
want of imagination (a far rarer and weaker 



preface 33 

faculty in women than men), and yet more, a 
the present day, through the subtle encourage, 
ment of your selfishness by the religious doc 
trine that all which we now suppose to be evi 
will be brought to a good end ; doctrine practi- 
cally issuing, not in less earnest efforts that the 
immediate unpleasantness may be averted from 
ourselves, but in our remaining satisfied in the 
contemplation of its ultimate objects, when it 
is inflicted on others. 

It is not likely that the more accurate meth- 
ods of recent mental education will now long 
permit young people to grow up in the per- 
suasion that, in any danger or distress, they 
may expect to be themselves saved by the 
providence of God, while those around them 
are lost by His Improvidence ; but they may be 
yet long restrained from rightly kind action, 
and long accustomed to endure both their own 
pain occasionally, and the pain of others al- 
ways, with an unwise patience, by misconcep- 
tion of the eternal and incurable nature of 
real evil, Observe, therefore, carefully in this 

matter : there are degrees of pain, and degrees 
2 



34 preface 

of faultfulness, which are altogether conquera- 
ble, and which seem to be merely forms of 
wholesome trial or discipline. Your fingers 
tingle when you go out on a frosty morning, 
and are all the warmer afterwards ; yo tr limbs 
are weary with wholesome work, and <e down 
in the pleasanter rest ; you are tried for a little 
while by having to wait for some promised 
good, and it is all the sweeter when it comes. 
But you cannot carry the trial past a certain 
point. Let the cold fasten on your hand ir an 
extreme degree, and your fingers will moulder 
from their sockets. Fatigue yourself, but once, 
to utter exhaustion, and to the end of life you 
shall not recover the former vigor of your 
frame. Let heart-sickness pass beyond a cer- 
tain bitter point, and the heart loses its life 
forever. 

Now, the very definition of evil is in this ir- 
remediableness. It means sorrow, or sin, which 
end in death ; and assuredly, as far as we know, 
or can conceive, there are many conditions both 
of pain and sin which cannot but so end. Of 
course we are ignorant and blind creatures, and 



preface 35 

we canot know what seeds of good may be in 
present suffering, or present crime ; but with 
what we cannot know, we are not concerned. 
It is conceivable that murderers and liars maj< 
in some distant world be exalted into a higher 
humanity than they could have reached without 
homicide or falsehood ; but the contingency is 
not one by which our actions should be guided. 
There is, indeed, a better hope that the beggar, 
who lies at our gates in misery, may within 
gates of pearl be comforted ; but the Master, 
whose words are our only authority for thinking 
so, never Himself inflicted disease as a blessing, 
nor sent away the hungry unfed, or the wounded 
unhealed. 

XII. Believe me, then, the only right prin- 
ciple of action here, is to consider good and 
evil as defined by our natural sense of both ; and 
to strive to promote the one, and to conquer 
the other, with a hearty endeavor as if there 
were, indeed, no other world than this. Above 
all, get quit of the absurd idea that Heaven will 
interfere to correct great errors, while allowing 
its laws to take their course in punishing small 



36 preface 

ones. If you prepare a dish of food carelessly, 
you do not expect Providence to make it pal- 
atable ; neither, if, through years of folly, you 
misguide your own life, need you expect Divine 
interference to bring round every thing at last 
for the best. I tell you, positively, the world is 
not so constituted : the consequences of great 
mistakes are just as sure as those of small ones, 
and the happiness of your whole life, and of all 
the lives over which you have power, depends 
as literally on your own common-sense and dis- 
cretion as the excellence and order of the feast 
of a day. 

XIII. Think carefully and bravely over these 
things, and you will find them true : having 
found them so, think also carefully over your 
own position in life. I assume that you belong 
to the middle cr upper classes, and that you 
would shrink from descending into a lower 
sphere. You may fancy you would not : nay, if 
you are very good, strong-hearted, and romantic, 
perhaps you really would not ; but it is not 
wrong that you should. You have then, I sup* 
pose, good food, pretty rooms to live in, pretty 



preface 37 

dresses to wear, power of obtaining every 
rational and wholesome pleasure ; you are, 
moreover, probably gentle and grateful, and in 
the habit of every day thanking God for these 
things. But why do you thank Him ? Is it be- 
cause, in these matters, as well as in your 
religious knowledge, you think He has made 
a favorite of you ? Is the essential meaning of 
your thankgiving, "Lord, I thank thee that I 
am not as other girls are, not in that I fast twice 
in the week while they feast, but in that I feast 
seven times a week, while they fast," and are 
you quite sure this is a pleasing form of thanks- 
giving to your Heavenly Father ? Suppose you 
saw one of your own true earthly sisters, Lucy 
or Emily, cast out of your mortal father's house, 
starving, helpless, heartbroken ; and that every 
morning when you went into ycur father's 
room, you said to him, "How good you are, 
father, to give me what you don't give Lucy," 
are you sure that, whatever anger your parent 
might have just cause for, against your sister, he 
would be pleased by that thanksgiving, or flat- 
tered by that praise? Nay, are you even sure 



38 preface 

that you are so much the favorite : suppose 
that, all this while, he loves poor Lucy just as well 
as you, and is only trying you through her pain, 
and perhaps not angry with her in anywise, but 
deeply angry with you, and all the more for 
your thanksgivings ? Would it not be well that 
you should think, and earnestly too, over this 
standing of yours : and all the more if you wish 
to believe that text, which clergymen so much 
dislike preaching on, "How hardly shall they 
that have riches enter into the Kingdom of God ' ' ? 
You do not believe it now, or you would be less 
complacent in your state ; and you cannot be- 
lieve it at all until you know that the Kingdom 
of God means — ' ' not meat and drink, but j ustice, 
peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost," nor until 
you know also that such joy is not by any 
means, necessarily, in going to church, or in 
singing hymns ; but may be joy in a dance, or 
joy in a jest, or joy in any thing you have 
deserved to possess, or that you are willing to 
give ; but joy in nothing that separates you, as 
by any strange favor, from your fellow-creatures, 
that exalts you through their degradation— 



preface 39 

exempts you from their toil — or indulges you in 
time of their distress. 

XIV. Think, then, and some day, I believe, 
you will feel also — no morbid passion of pity 
such as would turn you into a black Sister of 
Charity, but the steady fire of perpetual kind- 
ness which will make you a bright one. I speak 
in no disparagement of them ; I know well how 
good the Sisters of Charity are, and how much 
we owe to them ; but all these professional 
pieties (except so far as distinction or associa- 
tion may be necessary for effectiveness of work) 
are in their spirit wrong, and in practice merely 
plaster the sores of disease that ought never 
have been permitted to exist ; encouraging at 
the same time the herd of less excellent women 
in frivolity, by leading them to think that they 
must either be good up to the black standard, 
or cannot be good for any thing. Wear a cos- 
tume, by all means, if you like ; but let it be a 
cheerful and becoming one ; and be in your 
heart a Sister of Charity always, without either 
veiled or voluble declaration of it. 

XV. As I pause, before ending my preface— 



40 preface 

thinking of one or two more points that are 
difficult to write of — I find a letter in The 
Times, from a French lady, which says all I 
want so beautifully, that I will print it just as 
it stands : 

Sir, — It is often said that one example is 
worth many sermons. Shall I be judged pre- 
sumptuous if I point out one, which seems to 
me so striking just now, that, however painful, 
I cannot help dwelling upon it ? 

It is the share, the sad and large share, that 
French society and its recent habits of luxury, 
of expenses, of dress, of indulgence in every 
kind of extravagant dissipation, has to lay to its 
own door in its actual crisis of ruin, misery, and 
humiliation. If our mtnageres can be cited as 
an example to English housewives, so, alas ! 
can other classes of our society be set up as 
an example — not to be followed. 

Bitter must be the feelings of many a French 
woman whose days of luxury and expensive 
habits are at an end : and whose bills of bygone 
splendor lie with a heavy weight on her con- 
science, if not on her purse ! 

With us the evil has spread high and low. 
Everywhere have the examples given by the 
highest ladies in the land been followed but too 
successfully. 



preface 41 

Every year did dress become more extrava- 
gant, entertainments more costly, expenses 
of every kind more considerable. Lower and 
lower became the tone of society, its good 
breeding, its delicacy. More and more were 
monde and demi-monde associated in newspaper 
accounts of fashionable doings, in scandalous 
gossip, on race-courses, in premieres representa- 
tions, in imitation of each other's costumes, 
mobiliers and slang. 

Living beyond one's means became habitual 
almost necessary — for every one to keep up with, 
if not to go beyond, every one else. 

What the result of all this has been we now 
see in the wreck of our prosperity, in the down- 
fall of all that seemed brightest and highest. 

Deeply and fearfully impressed by what my 
own country has incurred and is suffering, I 
cannot help feeling sorrowful when I see in 
England signs of our besetting sins appearing 
also. Paint and chignons, slang and vaude- 
villes, knowing " Anonymas " by name, and 
reading doubtfully moral novels, are in them- 
selves small offences, although not many years 
ago they would have appeared very heinous 
ones, yet they are quick and tempting convey- 
ances on a very dangerous high-road. 

I would that all Englishwomen knew how 
they are looked up to from abroad — what a high 



42 preface 

opinion, what honor and reverence we foreign- 
ers have for their principles, their truthful- 
ness, the fresh and pure innocence of their 
daughters, the healthy youthfulness of their 
lovely children. 

May I illustrate this by a short example 
which happened very near me ? During the 
days of the hneutes of 1848, all the houses in 
Paris were being searched for fire-arms by the 
mob. The one I was living in contained none, 
as the master of the house repeatedly assured 
the furious and incredulous Republicans. They 
were going to lay violent hands on him, when 
his wife, an English lady, hearing the loud dis- 
cussion, came bravely forward and assured 
them that no arms were concealed. "Vous 
etes anglaise, nous vous croyons ; les anglaises 
disent toujours la verite," was the immediate 
answer, and the rioters quietly left. 

Now, Sir, shall I be accused of unjustified 
criticism if, loving and admiring your country, 
as these lines will prove, certain new features 
strike me az painful discrepancies in English life ? 

Far be it from me to preach the contempt of 
all that can make life lovable and wholesomely 
pleasant. I love nothing better than to see a 
woman nice, neat, elegant, looking her best in 
the prettiest dress that her taste and purse car 
afford, or your bright, fresh young girls fear 



preface 43 

lessly and perfectly sitting their horses, or 
adorning their houses as pretty [sic; it is not 
quite grammar, but is it better than if it were ;] 
as care, trouble, and refinement can make them. 

It is the degree beyond that which to us has 
proved so fatal, and that I would our example 
could warn you from, as a small repayment for 
your hospitality and friendliness to us in our 
days of trouble. 

May Englishwomen accept this in a kindly 
spirit as a new-year's wish from 

A French Lady. 

Dec. 29. 

That, then, is the substance of what I would 
fain say convincingly, if it might be, to my girl 
friends ; at all events with certainty in my own 
mind that I was thus far a safe guide to them. 

XVI. For other and older readers it is need- 
ful I should write a few words more, respecting 
what opportunity I have had to judge, or right 
I have to speak, of such things ; for, indeed, too 
much of what I have said about women has 
been said in faith only. A wise and lovely Eng- 
lish lady told me, when "Sesame and Lilies" 
first appeared, that she was sure the Sesame 
would be useful, but that in the Lilies I hid 



44 preface 

been writing of what I knew nothing about 
Which was in a measure too true, and also that 
it is more partial than my writings are usually ; 

for as BUesmere spoke his speech on the 

intervention, not indeed otherwise than he felt, 
but yet altogether for the sake of Gretchen, so I 
wrote the Lilies to please one girl ; and were it 
not for what I remember of her, and of few be- 
sides, should now perhaps recast some of the 
sentences in the Lilies in a very different tone : 
for as years have gone by, it has chanced to me, 
untowardly in some respects, fortunately in 
others (because it enables me to read history 
more clearly), to see the utmost evil that is in 
women, while I have had but to believe the 
utmost good. The best women are indeed neces- 
sarily the most difficult to know : they are 
recognized chiefly in the happiness of their 
husbands and the nobleness of their children ; 
they are only to be divined, not discerned, by 
the stranger ; and, sometimes, seem almost 
helpless except in their homes ; yet without the 
help of one of them,* to whom this book is 



preface 45 

dedicated, the day would probably have come 
before now, when I should have written and 
thought no more. 

XVII. On the other hand, the fashion of the 
time renders whatever is forward, coarse> or 
senseless, in feminine nature, too palpable to all 
men : — the weak picturesqueness of my earlier 
writings brought me acquainted with much of 
their emptiest enthusiasm ; and the chances of 
later life gave me opportunities of watching 
women in states of degradation and vindictive- 
ness which opened to me the gloomiest secrets 
of Greek and Syrian tragedy. I have seen 
them betray their household charities to lust, 
their pledged love to devotion ; I have seen 
mothers dutiful to their children, as Medea ; 
and children dutiful to their parents, as the 
daughter of Herodias : but my trust is still un- 
moved in the preciousness of the natures that 
are so fatal in their error, and I leave the words 
of the Lilies unchanged ; believing, yet, that 
no man ever lived a right life who had not been 
chastened by a woman's love, strengthened by 
her courage, and guided by her discretion. 



46 preface 

XVTTI. What I might myself have been, 
so helped, I rarely indulge in the idleness 
of thinking ; but what I am, since I take 
on me the function of a teacher, it is well 
that the reader should know, as far as I can 
tell him. 

Not an unjust person ; not an unkind one ; 
not a false one ; a lover of order, labor, and 
peace. That, it seems to me, is enough to give 
me right to say all I care to say on ethical 
subjects : more, I could only tell definitely 
through details of autobiography such as none 
but prosperous and (in the simple sense of the 
word) faultless, lives could justify ; — and mine 
has been neither. Yet, if any one, skilled in 
reading the torn manuscripts of the human soul, 
cares for more intimate knowledge of me, he 
may have it by knowing with what persons in 
past history I have most sympathy. 

I will name three. 

In all that is strongest and deepest in me,— 
that fits me for my work, and gives light or 
shadow to my being, I have sympathy with 
Guido Guinicelli. 



preface 47 

In my constant natural temper, and thoughts 
of things and of people, with Marmontel. 

In my enforced and accidental temper, and 
thoughts of things and of people, with Dean 
Swift. 

Any who can understand the natures of those 
three men, can understand mine ; and having 
said so much, I am content to leave both life 
and work to be remembered or forgotten, as 
their uses may deserve. 

Denmark Hiix, 

ut January, 1871. 




SESAME AND ULJES 

THREE IvECTURES 




SESAME AND LILIES. 



LECTURE I.— SESAME. 

OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 

" You shall each have a cake of sesame,— and ten pound." 
— I^ucian : The Fisherman. 

I. My first duty this evening is to ask your 
pardon for the ambiguity of title under which 
the subject of lecture has been announced : 
for indeed I am not going 1 to talk of kings, 
known as regnant, nor of treasuries, understood 
to contain wealth ; but of quite another order of 
royalty, and another material of riches, than 
those usually acknowledged. I had even in- 
tended to ask your attention for a little while on 
trust, and (as sometimes one contrives, in tak- 



52 Sceame anfc lilies 

ing a friend to see a favorite piece of scenery) to 
hide what I wanted most to show, with such im- 
perfect cunning as I might, until we unexpect- 
edly reached the best point of view by winding 
paths. But — and as also I have heard it said, 
by men practised in public address, that hearers 
are never so much fatigued as by the endeavor 
to follow a speaker who gives them no clue to 
his purpose — I will take the slight mask off at 
once, and tell you plainly that I want to speak 
to you about the treasures hidden in books ; 
and about the way we find them, and the way 
we lose them. A grave subject, you will say ; 
and a wide one ! Yes ; so wide that I shall 
make no effort to touch the compass of it. I will 
i.ry only to bring before you a few simple 
thoughts about reading, which press themselves 
upon me every day more deeply, as I watch the 
course of the public mind with respect to our 
daily enlarging means of education ; and the 
answeringly wider spreading on the levels, of 
the irrigation of literature. 

2. It happens that I have practically some 
connection with schools for different classes of 



©f Iftinfls' ^Treasuries 53 

youth ; and I receive many letters from parents 
respecting the education of their children. In the 
mass of these letters I am always struck by the 
precedence which the idea of a "position in 
life " takes above all other thoughts in the pa- 
rents' — more especially in the mothers' — minds. 
"The education befitting such and such a station 
in life" — this is the phrase, this the object, 
always. They never seek, as far as I can make 
out, an education good in itself; even the con- 
ception of abstract tightness in training rarely 
seems reached by the writers. But an educa- 
tion ' ' which shall keep a good coat on my 
son's back, which shall enable him to ring with 
confidence the visitors' bell at double-belled 
doors, which shall result ultimately in estab- 
lishment of a double-belled door to his own 
house, — in a word, which shall lead to "ad- 
vancement in life, — this we pray for on bent 
knees; and this is all we pray for." It 
never seems to occur to the parents that there 
may be an education which, in itself, is advance- 
ment in Ivife ; that any other than that may 
perhaps be advancement in Death, and that this 



54 Sesame anO Xiltes 

essential education might be more easily got, or 
given, than they fancy, if they set about it in 
the right way ; while it is for no price, and by 
no favor, to be got, if they set about it in the 
wrong. 

3. Indeed, among the ideas most prevalent 
and effective in the mind in this busiest of 
countries, I suppose the first — at least that 
which is confessed with the greatest frankness, 
and put forward as the fittest stimulus to youth- 
ful exertion — is this of "Advancement in life." 
May I ask you to consider with me what this 
idea practically includes, and what it should 
include. 

Practically, then, at present, "advancement 
in life " means becoming conspicuous in life, — 
obtaining a position which shall be acknowl- 
edged by others to be respectable or honorable. 
We do not understand by this advancement, in 
general, the mere making of money, but the 
being known to have made it ; not the accom- 
plishment of any great aim, but the being seen 
to have accomplished it. In a word, we mean 
the gratification of our thirst for applause. That 



©f IkutQS' Creasuvtes 55 

thirst, if the last infirmity of noble minds, is also 
the first infirmity of weak ones ; and, on the 
whole, the strongest impulsive influence of 
average humanity : the greatest efforts of the 
race have always been traceable to the love of 
praise, as its greatest catastrophes to the love of 
pleasure. 

4. I am not about to attack or defend this 
impulse. I want you only to feel how it lies at 
the root of effort, especially of all modern effort. 
It is the gratification of vanity which is, with 
us, the stimulus of toil and balm of repose ; so 
closely does it touch the very springs of life that 
the wounding of our vanity is always spoken of 
(and truly) as in its measure mortal ; we call it 
"mortification," using the same expression 
which we should apply to a gangrenous and in- 
curable bodily hurt. And although few of us 
may be physicians enough to recognize the 
various effect of this passion upon health and 
energy, I believe most honest men know, and 
would at once acknowledge, its leading power 
with them as a motive. The seaman does not 
commonly desire to be made captain only be- 



56 Seeamc and 3LUles 

cause he knows he can manage the ship better 
than any other sailor on board. He wants to 
be made captain that he may be called captain. 
The clergyman does not usually want to be 
made a bishop only because he believes no other 
hand can, as firmly as his, direct the diocese 
through its difficulties. He wants to be made 
bishop primarily that he may be called "My 
I/ord." And a prince does net usually desire to 
enlarge, or a subject to gain, a kingdom, because 
he believes that no one else can as well serve 
the State upon its throne ; but, briefly, because 
he wishes to be addressed as "Your Majesty," 
by as many lips as may be brought to such 
utterance. 

5. This, then, being the main idea of "ad- 
vancement in life," the force of it applies, for 
all of us, according to our station, particularly 
to that secondary result of such advancement 
which we call " getting into good society." We 
want to get into good society not that we may 
have it, but that we may be seen in it ; and our 
notion of its goodness depends primarily on its 
conspicuousness. 



&t Iftinas' ^Treasuries 57 

Will you pardon me if I pause for a moment 
to put what I fear you may think an impertinent 
question ? I never can go on with an address 
unless I feel, or know, that my audience are 
either with me or against me : I do not much 
care which, in beginning ; but I must know 
where they are ; and I would fain find out, at 
this instant, whether you think I am putting 
the motives of popular action too low. I am 
resolved, to-night, to state them low enough to 
be admitted as probable ; for whenever, in my 
writings on Political Economy, I assume that a 
little honesty, or generosity, — or what used to 
be called "virtue," — maybe calculated upon as 
a human motive of action, people always answer 
me, saying : " You must not calculate on that ; 
that is not in human nature ; you must not 
assume any thing to be common to men but 
acquisitiveness and jealousy ; no other feeling 
ever has influence on them, except accidentally, 
and in matters out of the way of business." I 
begin, accordingly, to-night low in the scale of 
motives ; but I must know if you think me 
right in doing so. Therefore, let me ask those 



58 Sesame anfc XUieg 

who admit the love of praise to be usually the 
strongest motive in men's minds in seeking ad- 
vancement, and the honest desire of doing any 
kind of duty to be an entirely secondary one, to 
hold up their hands. {About a dozen of hands 
held up — the audience, partly, not being sure 
the lecturer is serious, and, partly, shy of ex- 
pressing opinion.) I am quite serious — I really 
do want to know what you think ; however, I 
can judge by putting the reverse question. Will 
those who think that duty is generally the first, 
and love of praise the second, motive, hold up 
their hands ? {One hand reported to have been 
held up, behind the lecturer.) Very good ; I 
see you are with me, and that you think I have 
not begun too near the ground. Now, without 
teasing you by putting further question, I ven- 
ture to assume that you will admit duty as at 
least a secondary or tertiary motive. You think 
that the desire of doing something useful, or 
obtaining some real good, is indeed an existent 
collateral idea, though a secondary one, in most 
men's desire of advancement. You will grant 
that moderately honest men desire place and 



©f fRlngs' treasuries 59 

office, at least in some measure, for the sake of 
beneficent power ; and would wish to associate 
rather with sensible and well-informed persons 
than with fools and ignorant persons, whether 
they are seen in the company of the sensible 
ones or not. And finally, without being 
troubled by repetition of any common truisms 
about the preciousness of friends, and the in- 
fluence of companions, you will admit, doubt- 
less, that according to the sincerity of our desire 
that our friends may be true, and our compan- 
ions wise, — and in proportion to the earnestness 
and discretion with which we choose both, will 
be the general chances of our happiness and 
usefulness. 

6. But granting that we had both the will and 
the sense to choose our friends well, how few of 
us have the power ! or, at least, how limited, 
for most, is the sphere of choice ! Nearly all our 
associations are determined by chance, or neces- 
sity ; and restricted within a narrow circle. We 
cannot know whom we would ; and those whom 
we know, we cannot have at our side when we 
most need them. All the higher circles of 



60 Sesame anfc Xilfes 

human intelligence are, to those beneath, only 
momentarily and partially open. We may, by 
good fortune, obtain a glimpse of a great poet, 
and hear the sound of his voice ; or put a ques- 
tion to a man of science, and be answered good- 
humoredly. We may intrude ten minutes' 
talk on a cabinet minister, answered probably 
with words worse than silence, being deceptive; 
or snatch, once or twice in our lives, the privi- 
lege of throwing a bouquet in the path of a Prin- 
cess, or arresting the kind glance of a Queen. 
And yet these momentary chances we covet ; 
and spend our years, and passions, and powers 
in pursuit of little more than these ; while, 
meantime, there is a society continually open 
to us, of people who will talk to us as long as 
we like, whatever our rank or occupation ; — 
talk to us in the best words they can choose, 
and of the things nearest their hearts. And this 
society, because it is so numerous and so gentle, 
and can be kept waiting around us all day long, 
— kings and statesmen lingering patiently, not 
to grant audience, but to gain it ! — in those 
plainly furnished and narrow anterooms, our 



®t flunks' {Treasuries 6r 

bookcase shelves, — we make no account of that 
company, — perhaps never listen to a word they 
would say, all day long. 

7. You may tell me, perhaps, or think within 
yourselves, that the apathy with which we re- 
gard this company of the noble, who are pray- 
ing us to listen to them ; and the passion with 
which we pursue the company, probably of the 
ignoble, who despise us, or who have nothing 
to teach us, are grounded in this, — that we can 
see the faces of the living men, and it is them- 
selves, and not their sayings, with which we 
desire to become familiar. But it is not so. 
Suppose you never were to see their faces ; — 
suppose you could be put behind a screen in 
the statesman's cabinet, or the prince's cham- 
ber, would you not be glad to listen to their 
words, though you were forbidden to advance 
beyond the screen? And when the screen is 
only a little less, folded in two instead of four, 
and you can be hidden behind the cover of the 
two boards that bind a book, and listen all day 
long, not to the casual talk, but to the studied, 
determined, chosen addresses of the wisest of 



62 Sesame an& %ilice 

men ; — this station of audience, and honorable 
privy council, you despise ! 

8. But perhaps you will say that it is because 
the living people talk of things that are passing t 
and are of immediate interest to you, that you 
desire to hear them. Nay ; that cannot be so, 
for the living people will themselves tell you 
about passing matters, much better in their 
writings than in their careless talk. But I ad- 
mit that this motive does influence you, so far 
as you prefer those rapid and ephemeral writ- 
ings to slow and enduring writings — books, 
properly so called. For all books are divisible 
into two classes, the books of the hour, and the 
books of all time. Mark this distinction — it is 
not one of quality only. It is not merely the 
bad book that does not last, and the good one 
that does. It is a distinction of species. There 
are good books for the hour, and good ones foi 
all time ; bad books for the hour, and bad ones 
for all time. I must define the two kinds before 
I go farther. 

9. The good book of the hour, then,— I do 
not speak of the bad ones — is simply the useful 



®t IfcttiGS' treasuries 63 

or pleasant talk of some person whom you can- 
not otherwise converse with, printed for you. 
Very useful often, telling you what you need to 
know ; very pleasant often, as a sensible friend's 
present talk would be. These bright accounts 
of travels ; good-humored and witty discussions 
of question ; lively or pathetic story-telling in 
the form of novel ; firm fact-telling, by the real 
agents concerned in the events of passing 
history ;— all these books of the hour, multi- 
plying among us as education becomes more 
general, are a peculiar possession of the present 
age ; we ought to be entirely thankful for them, 
and entirely ashamed of ourselves if we make 
no good use of them. But we make the worst 
possible use if we allow them to usurp the place 
of true books : for, strictly speaking, they are 
not books at all, but merely letters or news- 
papers in good print. Our friend's letter may 
be delightful, or necessary, to-day: whether 
worth keeping or not, it is to be considered. 
The newspaper may be entirely proper at 
breakfast time, but assuredly it is not reading 
for all day. So, though bound up in a volume s 



64 Sesame and Xilies 

the long letter which gives you so pleasant an 
account of the inns, and roads, and weather last 
year at such a place, or which tells you that 
amusing story, or gives you the real circum- 
stances of such and such events, however 
valuable for occasional reference, may not be, 
in the real sense of the word, a "book " at all, 
nor, in the real sense, to be "read." A book 
is essentially not a talked thing, but a written 
thing ; and written, not with the view of mere 
communication, but of permanence. The book 
of talk is printed only because its author cannot 
speak to thousands of people at once; if he 
could, he would — the volume is mere multi- 
plication of his voice. You cannot talk to your 
friend in India ; if you could, you would ; you 
write instead : that is mere conveyance of voice. 
But a book is written, not to multiply the voice 
merely, not to carry it merely, but to perpetuate 
it. The author has something to say which he 
perceives to be true and useful, or helpfully 
beautiful. So far as he knows, no one has yet 
said it ; so far as he knows, no one else can say 



©f IRitise' {Treasuries 65 

it. He is bound to say it, clearly and melodi- 
ously if he may; clearly, at all events. In 
the sum of his life he finds this to be the thing, 
or group of things, manifest to him ; — this, the 
piece of true knowledge, or sight, which his 
share of sunshine and earth has permitted him 
to seize. He would fain set it down for ever ; 
engrave it on rock, if he could : saying, "This 
is the best of me ; for the rest, I ate, and drank, 
and slept, loved, and hated, like another ; my 
life was as the vapor, and is not ; but this I saw 
and knew : this, if any thing of mine, is worth 
your memory." That is his "writing" ; it is, 
in his small human way, and with whatever 
degree of true inspiration is in him, his inscrip- 
tion, or scripture. That is a " Book." 

10. Perhaps you think no books were ever so 
written. 

But, again, I ask you, do you at all believe in 
honesty, or at all in kindness ? or do you think 
there is never any honesty or benevolence in 
wise people ? None of us, I hope, are so un- 
happy as to think that. Well, whatever bit of 
3 



66 Sesame anD Xflies 

a wise man's work is honestly and benevolently 
done, that bit is his book, or his piece of art."" 
It is mixed always with evil fragments — ill done, 
redundant, affected work. But if you read 
rightly, you will easily discover the true bits, 
and those are the book. 

II. Now books of this kind have been written 
in all ages by their greatest men : — by great 
readers, great statesmen, and great thinkers. 
These are all at your choice ; and Life is short. 
You have heard as much before ; — yet have you 
measured and mapped out this short life and its 
possibilities ? Do you know, if you read this, 
that you cannot read that — that what you lose 
to-day you cannot gain to-morrow? Will you 
go and gossip with your housemaid, or your 
stable-boy, when you may talk with queens and 
kings ; or flatter yourselves that it is with any 
worthy consciousness of your own claims to 
respect that you jostle with the hungry and 
common crowd for entrie here, and audience 
there, when all the while this eternal court is 



* Note this sentence carefully, and compare "The 
Queen of the Air." 



©f 1Kfn06' {Treasuries 67 

open to you, with its society, wide as the world, 
multitudinous as its days, the chosen, and the 
mighty, of every place and time? Into that 
you may enter always ; in that you may take 
fellowship and rank according to your wish ; 
from that, once entered into it, you can never 
be outcast but by your own fault ; by your aris- 
tocracy of companionship there, your own in- 
herent aristocracy will be assuredly tested, and 
the motives with which you strive to take high 
place in the society of the living, measured, as 
to all the truth and sincerity that are in them, 
by the place you desire to take in this company 
of the Dead. 

12. "The place you desire," and the place you 
fit yourself for , I must also say ; because, ob- 
serve, this court of the past differs from all liv- 
ing aristocracy in this : — it is open to labor and 
to merit, but to nothing else. No wealth will 
bribe, no name overawe, no artifice deceive, the 
guardian of those Elysian gates. In the deep 
sense, no vile or vulgar person ever enters 
there. At the portieres of that silent Faubourg 
St. Germain, there is but brief question, Do you 



68 Sesame anD Xflfes 

deserve to enter? Pass. Do you ask to be the 
companion of nobles? Make yourself noble, 
and you shall be. Do you long for the conver- 
sation of the wise ? Learn to understand it, and 
you shall hear it. But on other terms? — No. 
If you will not rise to us, we cannot stoop to 
you. The living lord may assume courtesy, 
the living philosopher explain his thought to 
you with considerate pain ; but here we neither 
feign nor interpret ; you must rise to the level 
of our thoughts if you would be gladdened by 
them, and share our feelings, if you would 
recognize our presence." 

13. This, then, is what you have to do, and I 
admit that it is much. You must, in a word, 
love these people, if you are to be among them. 
No ambition is of any use. They scorn your 
ambition. You must love them, and show your 
love in these two following ways. 

/.—First, by a true desire to be taught by 
them, and co enter into their thoughts. To 
enter into theirs, observe ; not to find your own 
expressed by them. If the person who wrote 
the book is not wiser than you, ,vou need n<M 



©f IRtngs' treasuries 69 

read it ; if lie be, he will think differently from 
you in many respects. 

Very ready we are to say of a book, "How 
good this is — that 's exactly what I think ! " 
But the right feeling is, " How strange that is ! 
I never thought of that before, and yet I see it 
is true ; or if I do not now, I hope I shall, some 
day." But whether thus submissively or not, at 
least be sure that you go to the author to get at 
his meaning, not to find yours. Judge it after- 
wards, if you think yourself qualified to do so . 
but ascertain it first. And be sure also, if the 
author is worth any thing, that you will not 
get at his meaning all at once ; — nay, that at 
his whole meaning you will not for a long time 
arrive in any wise. Not that he does not say 
what he means, and in strong words too ; but 
he cannot say it all ; and what is more strange, 
will not, but in a hidden way and in parables, 
in order that he may be sure you want it. I 
cannot quite see the reason of this, nor analyze 
that cruel reticence in the breasts of wise men 
which makes them always hide their deeper 
thought. They do not give it to you by way 



70 Sceame an£> %ilice 

of help, but of reward ; and will make them- 
selves sure that you deserve it before they allow 
you to reach it. But it is the same with the 
physical type of wisdom, gold. There seems, 
to you and me, no reason why the electric 
forces of the earth should not carry whatever 
there is of gold within it at once to the moun- 
tain tops, so that kings and people might know 
that all the gold they could get was there ; and 
without any trouble of digging, or anxiety, or 
chance, or waste of time, cut it away, and coin 
as much as they needed. But Nature does not 
manage it so. She puts it in little fissures in 
the earth, nobody knows where : you may dig 
long and find none ; you must dig painfully to 
find any. 

14. And it is just the same with men's best 
wisdom. When you come to a good book, you 
must ask yourself: "Am I inclined to work as 
an Australian miner would ? Are my pickaxes 
and shovels in good order, and am I in good 
trim myself, my sleeves well up to the elbow, 
and my breath good, and my temper? " And, 
keeping the figure a little longer, even at cost 



Qt lings' {Treasuries 71 

of tiresomeness, for it is a thoroughly useful 
one, the metal you are in search of being the 
author's mind or meaning, bis words are as the 
rock which you have to crush and smelt in 
order to get at it. And your pickaxes are your 
own care, wit, and learning; your smelting- 
furnace is your own thoughtful soul. Do not 
hope to get at any good author's meaning 
without those tools and that fire ; often you 
will need sharpest, finest chiselling, and patient- 
est fusing, before you can gather one grain of 
the metal. 

15. And, therefore, first of all, I tell you, 
earnestly and authoritatively, (I know I am 
right in this,) you must get into the habit of 
looking intensely at words, and assuring your- 
self of their meaning, syllable by syllable— nay 
letter by letter. For though it is only by reason 
of the opposition of letters in the function of 
signs, to sounds in the function of signs, that 
the study of books is called "literature," and 
that a man versed in it is called, by the consent 
of nations, a man of letters instead of a man of 
books, or of words, you may yet connect with 



72 Sesame anD Xilfea 

that accidental nomenclature this real fact : 
that you might read all the books in the British 
Museum (if you could live long enough), and 
remain an utterly "illiterate," uneducated 
person ; but that if you read ten pages of a 
good book, letter by letter, — that is to say, with 
real accuracy, — you are for evermore in some 
measure an educated person. The entire differ- 
ence between education and non-education (as 
regards the merely intellectual part of it), con- 
sists in this accuracy. A well-educated gentle- 
man may not know many languages, — may not 
be able to speak any but his own, — may have 
read very few books. But whatever language 
he knows, he knows precisely ; whatever word 
he pronounces, he pronounces rightly ; abovt 
all, he is learned in the peerage of words ; 
^nows the words of true descent and ancient 
blood at a glance, from words of modern ca 
naille; remembers all their ancestry, their inter 
marriages, distant relationships, and the extend 
to which they were admitted, and offices thej 
held, among the national noblesse of words af 
any time, and in any country. But an unedu- 



Ot Ikings' (Treasuries 73 

cated person may know, by memory, many 
languages, and talk them all, and yet truly 
know not a word of any, — not a word even of 
his own. An ordinarily clever and sensible 
seaman will be able to make his way ashore at 
most ports ; yet he has only to speak a sentence 
of any language to be known for an illiterate 
person : so also the accent, or turn of expression 
of a single sentence, will at once mark a 
scholar. And this is so strongly felt, so con- 
clusively admitted by educated persons, that a 
fedse accent or a mistaken syllable is enough, 
in the parliament of any civilized nation, to 
assign to a man a certain degree of inferior 
standing for ever. 

16. And this is right ; but it is a pity that the 
accuracy insisted on is not greater, and required 
to a serious purpose. It is right that a false 
Latin quantity should excite a smile in the 
House of Commons ; but it is wrong that a 
false English meaning should not excite a 
frown there. Let the accent of words be 
watched ; and closely : let their meaning be 
watched more closely still, and fewer will do 



74 Sesame anfc XfUes 

the work. A few words well chosen and dis- 
tinguished, will do work that a thousand can- 
not, when every one is acting, equivocally, in 
the function of another. Yes ; and words, if 
they are not watched, will do deadly work 
sometimes. There are masked words droning 
and skulking about us in Europe just now, — 
(there never were so many, owing to the spread 
of a shallow, blotching, blundering, infectious 
" information,' ' or rather deformation, every- 
where, and to the teaching of catechisms and 
phrases at schools instead of human meanings) 
— there are masked words abroad, I say, which 
nobody understands, but which everybody uses, 
and most people will also fight for, live for, or 
even die for, fancying they mean this or that, 
or the other, of things dear to them : for such 
words wear chamseleon cloaks — " groundlion " 
cloaks, of the color of the ground of any man's 
fancy : on that ground they lie in wait, and 
rend him with a spring from it. There never 
were creatures of prey so mischievous, never 
diplomatists so cunning, never poisoners so 
deadly, as these masked words ; they are the 



©f Iftings' {Treasuries 75 

unjust stewards of all men's ideas : whatever 
fancy or favorite instinct a man most cherishes, 
he gives to his favorite masked word to take care 
of for him ; the word at last comes to have an 
infinite power over him, — you cannot get at him 
but by its ministry. 

17. And in languages so mongrel in breed as 
the English, there is a fatal power of equivoca- 
tion put into men's hands, almost whether they 
will or no, in being able to use Greek or Latin 
words for an idea when they want it to be 
awful ; and Saxon and otherwise common 
words when they want it to be vulgar. What a 
singular and salutary effect, for instance, would 
be produced on the minds of the people who 
are in the habit of taking the Form of the 
" Word " they live by, for the Power of which 
that Word tells them, if we always either 
retained, or refused, the Greek form " biblos," 
or "biblion," as the right expression for 
"book" — instead of employing it only in the 
one instance in which we wish to give dignity 
to the idea, and translating it into English 
everywhere else. How wholesome it would be 



76 Sesame and ILilies 

for many simple persons, if, in such places (for 
instance) as Acts xix., 19, we retained the 
Greek expression, instead of translating it, and 
they had to read : " Many of them also which 
used curious arts, brought their bibles together 
and burnt them before all men ; and they 
counted the price of them, and found it fifty 
thousand pieces of silver!" Or if, on the 
other hand, we translated where we retain it, 
and always spoke of " The Holy Book," instead 
of "Holy Bible," it might come into more 
heads than it does at present, that the Word of 
God, by which the heavens were, of old, and by 
which they are now kept in store,* cannot be 
made a present of to anybody in morocco bind- 
ing ; nor sown on any wayside by help either 
of steam plough or steam press ; but is never- 
theless being offered to us daily, and by us 
with contumely refused ; and sown in us daily, 
and by us, as instantly as may be, choked. 

18. So, again, consider what effect has been 
produced on the English vulgar mind by the 
use of the sonorous Latin form " damno," in 
* a Peter iii., 5-7. 



©f "Bungs' Sveaeurfes 77 

translating the Greek Karaxpi'vGo, when people 
charitably wish to make it forcible ; and the 
subctitution of the temperate "condemn" for 
it, when they choose to keep it gentle ; and 
what notable sermons have been preached by 
illiterate clergymen on, "He that believeth 
not shall be damned " ; though they would 
shrink with horror from translating Heb. xi., 
7, "The saving of his house, by which he 
damned the world"; or John viii., 10, n, 
" Woman, hath no man damned thee ? She 
saith : No man, Lord. Jesus answered her, 
Neither do I damn thee ; go and sin no more." 
And divisions in the mind of Europe, which 
have cost seas of blood and in the defence of 
which the noblest souls of men have been cast 
away in frantic desolation, countless as forest 
leaves — though, in the heart of them, founded 
on deeper causes — have nevertheless been ren- 
dered practicably possible, namely, by the 
European adoption of the Greek word for a 
public meeting, "ecclesia," to give peculiar 
respectability to such meetings, when held for 
religious purposes ; and other collateral equivo- 



78 Seeame and Xilles 

cations, such as the vulgar English one of using 
the word "priest" as a contraction lor "pres 
byter." 

19. Now, in order to deal with words rightly s 
this is the habit you must form. Nearly every 
word in your language- has been first a word 
of some other language — of Saxon, German, 
French, Latin, or Greek (not to speak of Eastern 
and primitive dialects). And many words have 
been all these ; — that is to say, have been Greek 
first, Latin next, French or German next, and 
English last : undergoing a certain change of 
sense and use on the lips of each nation ; but 
retaining a deep vital meaning, which all good 
scholars feel in employing them, even to this 
day. If you do not know the Greek alphabet, 
learn it : young or old — girl or boy — whoever 
you may be, if you think of reading seriously 
(which, of course, implies that you have some 
leisure at command), learn your Greek alpha- 
'bet ; then get good dictionaries of all these 
languages, and whenever you are in doubt 
about a word, hunt it down patiently. Read 
Max Miiller's lectures thoroughly, to begin 



©f Iftings* ^Treasuries 79 

with ; and, after that, never let a word escape 
you that looks suspicious. It is severe work; 
but you will find it, even at first, interesting, 
and at last, endlessly amusing. And the gen- 
eral gain to your character, in power and pre- 
cision, will be quite incalculable. 

Mind, this does not imply knowing, or trying 
to know, Greek or Latin or French. It takes 
a whole life to learn any language perfectly. 
But you can easily ascertain the meanings 
through which the English word has passed ; 
and those which in a good writer's work it 
must still bear. 

20. And now, merely for example's sake, I 

will, with your permission, read a few lines of 

a true book with you, carefully ; and see what 

will come out of them. I will take a book 

perfectly known to you all. No English words 

are more familiar to us, yet few perhaps have 

been read with less sincerity. I will take these 

few following lines of " Lycidas " : 

" I^ast came, and last did go, 
The pilot of the Galilean lake ; 
Two massy keys he bore of metals twain, 
(The golden opes, the iron shuts amain), 



80 Sesame anD Xiliee 

He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake, 

1 How well could I have spar'd for thee, young swain, 

Enow of such as for their bellies' sake 

Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold ! 

Of other care they little reckoning make, 

Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast. 

And shove away the worthy bidden guest ; 

Blind mouths ! that scarce themselves know how to 

hold 
A sheep-hook, or have learn'd aught else, the least 
That to the faithful herdsman's art belongs ! 
What recks it them ? What need they ? They are sped ; 
And when they list, their lean and flashy songs 
Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw ; 
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, 
But, swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw, 
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread ; 
Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw 
Daily devours apace, and nothing said.' " 



Let us think over this passage, and examine 
its words. 

First, is it not singular to find Milton assign- 
ing to St. Peter, not only his full episcopal 
function, but the very types of it which 
Protestants usually refuse most passionately? 
His "mitred" locks! Milton was no Bishop- 
lover; how comes St. Peter to be "mitred"? 
"Two massy keys he bore." Is this, then, the 
power of the keys claimed by the Bishops of 



®£ fringa' treasuries 81 

Rome, and is it acknowledged here by Milton 
only in a poetical license, for the sake of its 
picturesqueness, that he may get the gleam of 
the golden keys to help his effect? Do not 
think it. Great men do not play stage tricks 
with doctrines of life and death : only little 
men do that. Milton means what he says ; and 
means it with his might too — is going to put 
the whole strength of his spirit presently into 
the saying of it. For though not a lover of 
false bishops, he was a lover of true ones ; and 
the I^ake-pilot is here, in his thoughts, the type 
and head of true episcopal power. For Milton 
reads that text, " I will give unto thee the keys 
of the kingdom of heaven," quite honestly. 
Puritan though he be, he would not blot it out 
of the book because there have been bad 
bishops ; nay, in order to understand him, we 
must understand that verse first ; it will not do 
to eye it askance, or whisper it under our 
breath, as if it were a weapon of an adverse 
sect. It is a solemn, universal assertion, deeply 
to be kept in mind by all sects. But perhaps 
We shall be better able to reason on it if we go 



82 Sesame and Xtlies 

on a little farther, and come back to it. For 
clearly this marked insistence on the power 
of the true episcopate is to make us feel more 
weightily what is to be charged against the 
false claimants of episcopate ; or generally, 
against false claimants of power and rank in 
the body of the clergy ; they who, ' ' for their 
bellies' sake, creep, and intrude, and climb into 
the fold." 

21. Never think Milton uses those three 
words to fill up his verse, as a loose writer 
would. He needs all the three ; specially those 
three, and no more than those — "creep," and 
" intrude," and "climb " ; no other words would 
or could serve the turn, and no more could be 
added. For they exhaustively comprehend the 
three classes, correspondent to the three char- 
acters, of men who dishonestly seek ecclesiasti- 
cal power. First, those who "creep" into the 
fold ; who do not care for office, nor name, but 
for secret influence, and do all things occultly 
and cunningly, consenting to any servility of 
office or conduct, so only that they may inti* 
mately discern, and unawares direct, the minds 



©f lyings' treasuries 83 

of men. Then those who "intrude" (thrust, 
that is) themselves into the fold, who by natural 
insolence of heart, and stout eloquence of 
tongue, and fearlessly perseverant self-asser- 
tion, obtain hearing and authority with the 
common crowd. Lastly, those who "climb," 
who by labor and learning, both stout and 
sound, but selfishly exerted in the cause of 
their own ambition, gain high dignities and 
authorities, and become "lords over the heri- 
tage," though not "ensamples to the flock." 
22. Now go on : — 

" Of other care they little reckoning make, 
Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast. » 
Blind mouths — ' ' 

I pause again, for this is a strange expression ; 
a broken metaphor, one might think, careless 
and unscholarly. 

Not so ; its very audacity and pithiness are 
intended to make us look close at the phrase 
and remember it. Those two monosyllables 
express the precisely accurate contraries of 
right character, in the two great offices of the 
Church — those of bishop and pastor. 



84 Sesame anfc %\\iee 

A "Bishop " means a " person who sees." 
A "Pastor" means a "person who feeds." 
The most unbishoply character a man can 
have is therefore to be Blind. 

The most unpastoral is, instead of feeding, to 
want to be fed, — to be a Mouth. 

Take the two reverses together, and you have 
" blind mouths." We may advisably follow 
out this idea a little. Nearly all the evils in the 
Church have arisen from bishops desiring power 
more than light. They want authority, not 
outlook. Whereas their real office is not to 
rule ; though it may be vigorously to exhort 
and rebuke ; it is the king's office to rule ; the 
bishop's office is to oversee the flock ; to num- 
ber it, sheep by sheep ; to be ready always to 
give full account of it. Now it is clear he can- 
not give account of the souls, if he has not so 
much as numbered the bodies of his flock. The 
first thing, therefore, that a bishop has to do is 
at least to put himself in a position in which, at 
any moment, he can obtain the history, from 
childhood, of every living soul in his diocese, 
and of its present state. Down in that back 



Ot Ikings' (Treasuries 85 

street, Bill, and Nancy, knocking each other's 
teeth out ! — Does the bishop know all about it? 
Has he his eye upon them? Has he had his 
2ye upon them ? Can he circumstantially ex- 
plain to us how Bill got into the habit of beat- 
ing Nancy about the head ? If he cannot, he is 
no bishop, though he had a mitre as high as 
Salisbury steeple ; he is no bishop, — he has 
sought to be at the helm instead of the mast- 
head ; he has no sight of things. " Nay," you 
say, " it is not his duty to look after Bill in the 
back street." What ! the fat sheep that have 
full fleeces — you think it is only those he should 
look after, while (go back to your Milton) " the 
hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, besides 
what the grim wolf, with privy paw " (bishops 
knowing nothing about it) " daily devours 
apace, and nothing said " ? 

"But that 's not our idea of a bishop." * Per- 
haps not ; but it was St. Paul's ; and it was Mil- 
ton's. They may be right, or we may be ; but we 
must not think we are reading either one or the 
other by putting our meaning into their words. 
♦Compare the 13th fetter in " Time and Tide." 



86 Sesame and 3LUiea 

23. I go on. 

" But, swoln with wind, and the rank mist they 
draw." 

This is to meet the vulgar answer that " if the 
poor are not looked after in their bodies, they 
are in their souls ; they have spiritual food." 

And Milton says : "They have no such thing 
as spiritual food ; they are only swollen with 
wind." At first you may think that is a coarse 
type, and an obscure one. But again, it is a 
quite literally accurate one. Take up your 
Latin and Greek dictionaries, and find out the 
meaning of "Spirit." It is only a contraction 
of the Latin word " breath," and an indistinct 
translation of the Greek word for " wind. " The 
same word is used in writing, "The windbloweth 
where it listeth " ; and in writing, " So is every 
one that is born of the Spirit' ; born of the 
breath, that is ; for it means the breath of God, 
in soul and body. We have the true sense of it 
in our words "inspiration" and "expire." 
Now, there are two kinds of breath with which 
the flock may be filled ; God's breath, and man's. 
The breath of God is health, and life, and peace 



©f Iftings' treasuries 87 

to them, as the air of heaven is to the flocks on 
the hills ; but man's breath — the word which he 
calls spiritual — is disease and contagion to 
them, as the fog of the fen. They rot inwardly 
with it ; they are puffed up by it, as a dead body 
by the vapors of its own decomposition. This 
is literally true of all false religious teaching ; 
the first and last, and fatalest sign of it is that 
"puffing up." Your converted children, who 
teach their parents ; your converted convicts, 
who teach honest men ; your converted dunces, 
who, having lived in cretinous stupefaction half 
their lives, suddenly awakening to the fact of 
there being a God, fancy themselves therefore 
His peculiar people and messengers ; your sec- 
tarians of every species, small and great, Catholic 
or Protestant, of high church or low, in so far as 
hey think themselves exclusively in the right 
and others wrong ; and pre-eminently, in every 
sect, those who hold that men can be saved by 
thinking rightly instead of doing rightly, by 
word instead of act, and wish instead of work : — 
these are the true fog children — clouds, these, 
without water ; bodies, these, of putrescent vapor 



88 Sesame and %ilice 

and skin, without blood or flesh ; blown bag- 
pipes for the fiends to pipe with — corrupt, and 
corrupting, — "swoln with wind, and the rank 
mist they draw." 

24. Lastly, let us return to the lines respecting 
the power of the keys, for now we can under- 
stand them. Note the difference between Mil. 
ton and Dante in their interpretation of this 
power : for once, the latter is weaker in thought ; 
he supposes both the keys to be of the gate of 
heaven ; one is of gold, the other of silver ; the)' 
are given by St. Peter to the sentinel angel; 
and it is not easy to determine the meaning 
either of the substances of the three steps of 
the gate, or of the two keys. But Milton makes 
one, of gold, the key of heaven ; the other, of 
iron, the key of the prison in which the wicked 
teachers are to be bound who "have taken away 
the key of knowledge, yet entered not in them- 
selves." 

We have seen that the duties of bishop and 
pastor are to see, and to feed ; and of all who do 
so it is said : "He that watereth, shall be 
watered also himself." But the reverse is truth 



©f IKincjs' treasuries 8 9 

also. He that watereth not, shall be withered 
himself, and he that seeth not, shall himself be 
shut out of sight. — shut into the perpetual 
prison-house. And that prison opens here, as 
well as hereafter : he who is to be bound in 
heaven must first be bound on earth. That 
command to the strong angels, of which the 
rock-apostle is the image, " Take him, and 
bind him hand and foot, and cast him out," 
issues, in its measure, against the teacher, for 
every help withheld, and for every truth refused, 
and for every falsehood enforced ; so that he is 
more strictly fettered the more he fetters, and 
farther outcast, as he more and more misleads, 
till at last the bars of the iron cage close upon 
him, and as "the golden opes, the iron shuts 
amain." 

25. We have got something out of the lines, I 
think, and much more is yet to be found in 
them ; but we have done enough by way of 
example of the kind of word-by-word examina- 
tion of your author which is rightly called 
" reading " ; watching every accent and expres- 
sion, and putting ourselves always in the 



go Sesame anD Xllies 

author's place, annihilating our own person- 
ality, and seeking to enter into his, so as to be 
able assuredly to say, " Thus Milton thought," 
not "Thus / thought, in mis-reading Milton.-* 
And by this process you will gradually come 
to attach less weight to your own "Thus I 
thought" at other times. You will begin to 
perceive that what you thought was a matter 
of no serious importance ; that your thoughts 
on any subject are not perhaps the clearest and 
wisest that could be arrived at thereupon : — in 
fact, that unless you are a very singular person, 
you cannot be said to have any " thoughts " at 
all; that you have no materials for them, in 
any serious matters* ; no right to " think," but 
only to try to learn more of the facts. Nay, 
most probably all your life (unless, as I said, 
you are a singular person) you will have no 
legitimate right to an " opinion " on any 
business, except that instantly under youi 
hand. What must of necessity be done, you 
can always find out, beyond question, how to 

* Modern "Education" for the most part signifies 
giving people the faculty of thinking wrong on every 
conceivable subject of importance to them. 



©I Urtngs' {Treasuries 91 

do. Have you a house to keep in order, a 
commodity to sell, a field to plough, a ditch to 
cleanse ? There need be no two opinions about 
these proceedings ; it is at your peril if you 
have not much more than an "opinion" on 
the way to manage such matters. And also, 
outside of your own business, there are one or 
two subjects on which you are bound to have 
but one opinion. That roguery and lying 
ire objectionable, and are instantly to be 
flogged out of the way whenever discovered , 
that covetousness and love of quarrelling are 
dangerous dispositions even in children, and 
deadly dispositions in men and nations ; that, 
in the end, the God of heaven and earth loves 
active, modest, and kind people, and hates 
idle, proud, greedy, and cruel ones ; — on these 
general facts you are bound to have but one, and 
that a very strong, opinion. For the rest, re- 
specting religions, governments, sciences, arts, 
you will find that, on the whole, you can know 
nothing, judge nothing ; that the best you can 
do, even though you may be a well-educated 
person, is to be silent, and strive to be wiser 



92 Sesame and Xiliea 

every day, and to understand a little more of 
the thoughts of others, which so soon as you 
try to do honestly, you will discover that the 
thoughts even of the wisest are very little more 
than pertinent questions. To put the difficulty 
into a clear shape, and exhibit to you the 
grounds for /^decision, that is all they can gen- 
erally do for you ! — and well for them and for 
us, if indeed they are able " to mix the music 
with our thoughts, and sadden us with heavenly 
doubts." This writer, from whom I have been 
reading to you, is not among the first or 
wisest ; he sees shrewdly as far as he sees, and 
therefore it is easy to find out his full meaning : 
but with the greater men, you cannot fathom 
their meaning ; they do not even wholly meas- 
ure it themselves, — it is so wide. Suppose I 
had asked you, for instance, to seek for 
Shakespeare's opinion, instead of Milton's, on 
this matter of Church authority ? or for Dante's? 
Have any of you, at this instant, the least idea 
what either thought about it ? Have you ever 
balanced the scene with the bishops in " Richard 
the Third," against the character of Cranmer? 



©f fkings' {Treasuries 93 

the description of St. Francis and St. Dominic 
against that of him who made Virgil wonder to 
gaze upon him, " disteso, tanto vilmente, neW 
?terno esilio" ; or of him whom Dante stood 
oeside, "come '/ frate che confessa lo perfido 
2ssassin ? " f Shakespeare and Alighieri knew 
men better than most of us, I presume ! They 
were both in the midst of the main struggle 
between the temporal and the spiritual powers. 
They had an opinion, we may guess. But 
where is it ? Bring it into court ! Put Shake- 
speare's or Dante's creed into articles, and send 
it up for trial by the Ecclesiastical Courts ! 

26. You will not be able, I tell you again, for 
many and many a day, to come at the real pur- 
poses and teaching of these great men ; but a 
very little honest study of them will enable you 
to perceive that what you took for your own 
"judgment" was mere chance prejudice, and 
3rifted, helpless, entangled weed of castaway 
thought : nay, you will see that most men's 
minds are indeed little better than rough heath 
wilderness, neglected and stubborn, partly bar* 
* Inf. xxiii., 125, 126 ; xix., 49, 50. 



Q4 Seeame anD Xilfes 

ren, partly overgrown with pestilent brakes, 
and venomous, wind-sown herbage of evil sur- 
mise ; that the first thing you have to do for 
them, and yourself, is eagerly and scornfully to 
set fire to this ; burn all the jungle into whole- 
some ash heaps, and then plough and sow. 
All the true literary work before you, for life, 
must begin with obedience to that order : 
" Break up your fallow ground, and sow not 
among thorns." 

27. II.* Having then faithfully listened to 
the great teachers, that you may enter into 
their Thoughts, you have yet this higher ad- 
vance to make : you have to enter into their 
Hearts. As you go to them first for clear sight, 
so you must stay with them, that you may share 
at last their just and mighty Passion. Passion, 
or " sensation." I am not afraid of the word ; 
still less of the thing. You have heard many 
outcries against sensation lately ; but, I can 
tell you, it is not less sensation we want, but 
more. The ennobling difference between one 
man and another, — between one animal and 
* Compare with ft 13. 



©f Ifctncjs' treasuries 95 

another, — is precisely in this, that one feels 
more than another. If we were sponges, per- 
haps sensation might not be easily got for us ; 
if we were earthworms, liable at every instant 
to be cut in two by the spade, perhaps too much 
sensation might not be good for us. But, being 
human creatures, it is good for us ; nay, we are 
only human in so far as we are sensitive, and 
our honor is precisely in proportion to our 
passion. 

28. You know I said of that great and pure 
society of the dead, that it would allow "no 
vain or vulgar person to enter there." What 
do you think I meant by a" vulgar " person ? 
What do you yourselves mean by '' vulgarity " ? 
You will find it a fruitful subject of thought ; 
but, briefly, the essence of all vulgarity lies in 
want of sensation. Simple and innocent vul- 
garity is merely an untrained and undeveloped 
bluntness of body and mind ; but in true inbred 
vulgarity, there is a deathful callousness, which, 
in extremity, becomes capable of every sort of 
bestial habit and crime, without fear, without 
pleasure, without horror, and without pity. It 



96 Sesame and Xilfes 

is in the blunt hand and the dead heart, in the 
diseased habit, in the hardened conscience, that 
men become vulgar ; they are forever vulgar, 
precisely in proportion as they are incapable 
of sympathy, — of quick understanding, — of all 
that, in deep insistence on the common but 
most accurate term, may be called the "tact " 
or " touch-faculty " of body and soul ; that tact 
which the Mimosa has in trees, which the pure 
woman has above all creatures ; — fineness and 
fulness of sensation beyond reason ; — the guide 
and sanctifier of reason itself. Reason can but 
determine what is true : — it is the God-given 
passion of humanity which alone can recognize 
what God has made good. 

29. We come then to the great concourse of 
the Dead, not merely to know from them what 
is True, but chiefly to feel with them what 
is just. Now, to feel with them, we must be 
like them ; and none of us can become that 
without pains. As the true knowledge is disci- 
plined and tested knowledge, — not the first 
thought that comes, — so the true passion is 
disciplined and tested passion, — not the first 



©t Icings' {Treasuries 97 

passion that comes. The first that come are 
the vain, the false, the treacherous ; if you 
yield to them they will lead you wildly and fat 
in vain pursuit, in hollow enthusiasm, till you 
have no true purpose and no true passion left. 
Not that any feeling possible to humanity is in 
itself wrong, but only wrong when undisci- 
plined. Its nobility is in its force and justice ; 
it is wrong when it is weak, and felt for paltry 
cause. There is a mean wonder, as of a child 
who sees a juggler tossiug golden balls, and 
this is base, if you will. But do you think that 
the wonder is ignoble, or the sensation less, with 
which every human soul is called to watch the 
golden balls of heaven tossed through the night 
by the Hand that made them ? There is a mean 
curiosity, as of a child opening a forbidden door, 
or a servant prying into her master's business ; 
— and a noble curiosity, questioning, in the 
front of danger, the source of the great rivet 
beyond the sand, — the place of the great contk 
nents beyond the sea ; — a nobler curiosity still 
which questions of the source of the River of 
L,ife, and of the space of the Continent of 



98 Seeame anfc Xilies 

Heaven, — things which "the angels desire to 
look into." So the anxiety is ignoble, with 
which you linger over the course and catas- 
trophe of an idle tale ; but do you think the 
anxiety is less, or greater, with which you 
watch, or ought to watch, the dealings of fate 
and destiny with the life of an agonized nation? 
Alas ! it is the narrowness, selfishness, minute- 
ness, of your sensation that you have to deplore 
in England at this day ; — sensation which spends 
itself in bouquets and speeches ; in revellings 
and junketings ; in sham fights and gay puppet 
shows, while you can look on and see noble na- 
tions murdered, man by man, without an effort 
or a tear. 

30. I said "minuteness" and "selfishness" 
of sensation, but, in a word, I ought to have 
said "injustice " or " unrighteousness" of sen- 
sation. For as in nothing is a gentleman bet- 
ter to be discerned from a vulgar person, so in 
nothing is a gentle nation (such nations have 
been) better to be discerned from a mob, than 
in this, — that their feelings are constant and 
just, results of due contemplation, and of equal 



©f Iftfngs' ^Treasuries 99 

thought. You can talk a mob into any thing ; 
its feelings may be — usually are, — on the whole, 
generous and right ; but it has no foundation 
for them, no hold of them ; you may tease or 
tickle it into any, at your pleasure ; it thinks by 
infection, for the most part, catching an opinion 
like a cold, and there is nothing so little that 
it will not roar itself wild about, when the fit 
is on ; nothing so great but it will forget in an 
hour, when the fit is past. But a gentleman's 
or a gentle nation's passions are just, measured, 
and continuous. A great nation, for instance, 
does not spend its entire national wits for a 
couple of months in weighing evidence of a 
single ruffian's having done a single murder ; 
and for a couple of years see its own children 
murder each other by their thousands or tens 
of thousands a day, considering only what the 
effect is likely to be on the price of cotton, and 
caring nowise to determine which side of 
battle is in the wrong. Neither does a great 
nation send its poor little boys to jail for steal- 
ing six walnuts ; and allow its bankrupts to 
steal their hundreds or thousands with a bow, 



too Sesame ant) Xflies 

and its bankers, rich with poor men's savings, 
to close their doors " under circumstances over 
which they have no control," with a "by your 
leave " ; and large landed estates to be bought 
by men who have made their money by go- 
ing with armed steamers up and down the 
China Seas, selling opium at the cannon's 
mouth, and altering, for the benefit of the for- 
eign nation, the common highwayman's de- 
mand of " your money or your life," into that 
of " your money and your life." Neither does 
a great nation allow the lives of its innocent 
poor to be parched out of them by fog fever, 
and rotted out of them by dunghill plague, for 
the sake of sixpence a life extra per week to 
its landlords * ; and then debate with drivel- 
ling tears, and diabolical sympathies, whether 
it ought not piously to save, and nursingly 
cherish, the lives of its murderers. Also, a 
great nation, having made up its mind that 
hanging is quite the wholesomest process for 
its homicides in general, can yet with mercy 
distinguish between the degrees of guilt in 
* See note at end of lecture. 



©f Iktncjs' treasuries 101 

homicides ; and does not yelp like a pack of 
frost-pinched wolf-cubs on the blood-track of 
an unhappy crazed boy, or gray-haired clodpate 
Othello, " peplexed i' the extreme," at the very 
moment that it is sending a Minister of the 
Crown to make polite speeches to a man who is 
bayoneting young girls in their father's sight, 
and killing noble youths in cool blood, faster 
than a country butcher kills lambs in spring. 
And lastly, a great nation does not mock 
Heaven and its Powers, by pretending belief in 
a revelation which asserts the love of money 
to be the root of all evil, and declaring, at the 
same time, that it is actuated, and intends to 
be actuated, in all chief national deeds and 
measures, by no other love. 

31. My friends, I do not know why any 
of us should talk about reading. We want 
some sharper discipline than that of reading ; 
but, at all events, be assured, we cannot read. 
No reading is possible for a people with its 
mind in this state. No sentence of any great 
writer is intelligible to them. It is simply 
and sternly impossible for the English pub- 



io2 Sesame anfc Utiles 

lie, at this moment, to understand any thought 
ful writing, — so incapable of thought has it 
become in its insanity of avarice. Happily, 
our disease is, as yet, little worse than this 
incapacity of thought ; it is not corruption 
of the inner nature ; we ring true still, when 
any thing strikes home to us ; and though 
the idea that every thing should "pay" has 
infected our every purpose so deeply, that 
even when we would play the good Samaritan, 
we never take out our twopence and give them 
to the host, without saying, " When I come 
again, thou shalt give me fourpence," there is 
a capacity of noble passion left in our hearts' 
core. We show it in our work — in our war, — 
even in those unjust domestic affections which 
make us furious at a small private wrong, while 
we are polite to a boundless public one : we are 
still industrious to the last hour of the day, 
though we add the gambler's fury to the labor- 
er's patience ; we are still brave to the death, 
though incapable of discerning true cause for 
battle ; and are still true in affection to our own 
flesh, to the death, as the sea-monsters are, and 



©f Iktngs' treasuries *o3 

the rock-eagles. And there is hope for a nation 
while this can be still said of it. As long as it 
holds its life in its hand, ready to give it for its 
honor (though a foolish honor), for its love 
(though a selfish love), and for its business 
(though a base business), there is hope for it. 
But hope only ; for this instinctive, reckless 
virtue cannot last. No nation can last which 
has made a mob of itself, however generous at 
heart. It must discipline its passions, and 
direct them, or they will discipline it, one day, 
with scorpion whips. Above all, a nation can- 
not last as a money-making mob : it cannot 
with impunity, — it cannot with existence, — go 
on despising literature, despising science, 
despising art, despising nature, despising 
compassion, and concentrating its soul on 
Pence. Do you think these are harsh or wild 
words? Have patience with me but a little 
longer. I will prove their truth to you, clause 
by clause. 

32. /. — I say, first, we have despised literature. 
What do we, as a nation, care about books? 
How much do you think we spend altogether on 



io4 Sesame anD Xilies 

our libraries, public or private, as compared 
with what we spend on our horses ? If a man 
spends lavishly on his library, you call him 
mad — a biblio-maniac. But you never call any 
one a horse-maniac, though men ruin them- 
selves every day by their horses, and you do not 
hear of people ruining themselves by their 
books. Or, to go lower still, how much do you 
think the contents of the book-shelves of the 
United Kingdom, public and private, would 
fetch, as compared with the contents of its 
wine-cellars ? What position would its expendi- 
ture on literature take, as compared with its 
expenditure on luxurious eating ? We talk of 
food for the mind, as of food for the body : now 
a good book contains such food inexhaustibly ; 
it is a provision for life, and for the best part of 
us ; yet how long most people would look at the 
best book before they would give the price of a 
large turbot for it ! Though there have been 
men who have pinched their stomachs and 
bared their backs to buy a book, whose libraries 
were cheaper to them, I think, in the end, than 
most men's dinners are. We are few of us put 



®t Stings' treasuries 105 

to such trial, and more the pity ; for, indeed, a 
precious thing is all the more precious to us if 
it has been won by work or economy ; and if 
public libraries were half as costly as public 
dinners, or books cost the tenth part of what 
bracelets do, even foolish men and women 
might sometimes suspect there was good in 
reading, as well as in munching and sparkling ; 
whereas the very cheapness of literature is 
making even wise people forget that if a book 
is worth reading, it is worth buying. No book 
is worth any thing which is not worth much ; 
nor is it serviceable until it has been read, antf 
reread, and loved, and loved again ; andmarkec\ 
so that you can refer to the passages you want 
in it, as a soldier can seize the weapon he needs 
in an armory, or a housewife bring the spice 
she needs from her store. Bread of flour is 
good : but there is bread, sweet as honey, if we 
would eat it, in a good book ; and the family 
must be poor indeed which, once in their lives, 
cannot, for such multipliable barley-loaves, pay 
their baker's bill. We call ourselves a rich 
nation, and we are filthy and foolish enough to 



106 Sesame anD Xilies 

thumb each other's books out of circulating 
libraries ! 

33. 77. — I say we have despised science, 
"What!" you exclaim, " are we not foremost 
in all discovery,* and is not the whole world 
giddy by reason, or unreason, of our inven- 
tions?" Yes; but do you suppose that is 
national work ? That work is all done in spite 
of the nation ; by private people's zeal and 
money. We are glad enough, indeed, to make 
our profit of science ; we snap up any thing in 
the way of a scientific bone that has meat on it, 
eagerly enough ; but if the scientific man comes 
for a bone or a crust to us, that is another story. 
What have we publicly done for science ? We 
are obliged to know what o'clock it is, for the 
safety of our ships, and therefore we pay for an 
observatory ; and we allow ourselves, in the 
person of our Parliament, to be annually tor- 
mented into doing something, in a slovenly way, 
for the British Museum ; sullenly apprehend- 



* Since this was written the answer has become 
definitely— No ; we have surrendered the field of Arctic 
discovery to the Continental nations, as being ourselves 
too poor to pay for ships. 



Qt 1kir\Q&' ^Treasuries 107 

ing that to be a place for keeping stuffed birds 
in, to amuse our children. If anybody will 
pay for their own telescope, and resolve an- 
other nebula, we cackle over the discern- 
ment as if it were our own ; if one in ten 
thousand of our hunting squires suddenly 
perceives that the earth was indeed made 
to be something else than a portion for 
foxes, and burrows in it himself, and tells us 
where the gold is, and where the coals, we 
understand that there is some use in that, and 
very properly knight him ; but is the accident 
of his having found out how to employ himself 
usefully any credit to us ? (The negation of 
such discovery among his brother squires may 
perhaps be some accredit to us, if we would 
consider of it.) But if you doubt these gen- 
eralities, here is one fact for us all to meditate 
upon, illustrative of our love of science. Two 
years ago there was a collection of the fossils 
of Solenhofen to be sold in Bavaria ; the best in 
existence, containing many specimens unique 
for perfectness, and one, unique as an example 
of a species (a whole kingdom of unknown 



io8 Sesame an6 DOffes 

living creatures being announced by that fos- 
sil). This collection, of which the mere market 
worth, among private buyers, would probably 
have been some thousand or twelve hundred 
pounds, was offered to the English nation for 
seven hundred ; but we would not give seven 
hundred, and the whole series would have been 
in the Munich Museum at this moment, if Pro- 
fessor Owen* had not, with loss of his own 
time, and patient tormenting of the British 
public in person of its representatives, got 
leave to give four hundred pounds at once, and 
himself become answerable for the other three ! 
which the said public will doubtless pay him 
eventually, but sulkily, and caring nothing 
about the matter all the while ; only always 
ready to cackle if any credit comes of it. Con- 
sider, I beg of you, arithmetically, what this 
fact means. Your annual expenditure for pub- 
lic purposes (a third of it for military appara- 
tus) is at least fifty millions. Now 700/. is to 

*I state this fact without Professor Owen's permis- 
sion ; which of course he could not with propriety have 
granted, had I asked it ; but I consider it so important 
that the public should be aware of the fact that I do 
what seems to be right though rude. 



Qt fangs' treasuries 109 

50,000,000/. roughly, as seven pence to two 
thousand pounds. Suppose, then, a gentleman 
of unknown income, but whose wealth was to 
be conjectured from the fact that he spent two 
thousand a year on his park-walls and footmen 
only, professes himself fond of science ; and 
that one of his servants comes eagerly to tell 
him that an unique collection of fossils, giving 
clue to a new era of creation, is to be had for 
the sum of seven pence sterling ; and that the 
gentleman, who is fond of science, and spends 
two thousand a year on his park, answers, after 
keeping his servant waiting several months : 
"Well ! I '11 give you four pence for them, if 
you will be answerable for the extra three pence 
yourself, till next year ! " 

34. III. — I say you have despised Art ! 
"What!" you again answer, "have we not 
Art exhibitions, miles long ? and do we not pay 
thousands of pounds for single pictures ? and 
have we not Art schools and institutions, more 
than ever nation had before ? " Yes, truly, but 
all that is for the sake of the shop. You would 
fain sell canvas as well as coals, and crockery 



no Sesame anfc Utiles 

as well as iron ; you would take every other 
nation's bread out of its mouth if you could * ; 
not being able to do that, your ideal of life is to 
stand in the thoroughfares of the world, like 
L,udgate apprentices, screaming to every passer- 
by : "What d'ye lack?" You know nothing 
of your own faculties or circumstances ; you 
fancy that, among your damp, flat fields of 
clay, you can have as quick art-fancy as the 
Frenchman among his bronzed vines, or the 
Italian under his volcanic cliffs ; — that Art 
may be learned as book-keeping is, and when 
learned will give you more books to keep. You 
care for pictures, absolutely, no more than you 
do for the bills pasted on your dead walls. 
There is always room on the walls for the bills 
to be read, — never for the pictures to be seen. 
You do not know what pictures you have (by 
repute) in the country, nor whether they are 
false or true, nor whether they are taken care 
of or not ; in foreign countries, you calmly see 



* That was our real idea of " Free Trade "— " all the 
trade to myself " You find now that by " competition " 
other people can manage to sell something as well as 
you— and now we call for Protection again. Wretches 1 



Of IfttnQS' treasuries hi 

the noblest existing pictures in the world 
rotting in abandoned wreck — (in Venice you 
saw the Austrian guns deliberately pointed at 
the palaces containing them), and if you heard 
that all the fine pictures in Europe were made 
into sand-bags to-morrow on the Austrian forts, 
it would not trouble you so much as the chance 
of a brace or two of game less in your own 
bags, in a day's shooting. That is your national 
love of Art. 

35. IV. — You have despised nature — that is to 
say, all the deep and sacred sensations of natu- 
ral scenery. The French revolutionists made 
stables of the cathedrals of France ; you have 
made race-courses of the cathedrals of the earth. 
Your one conception of pleasure is to drive in 
railroad carriages round their aisles, and eat 
off their altars.* You have put a railroad bridge 
over the fall of Schaffhausen ; you have tun- 
nelled the cliffs of Lucerne by TelPs chapel ; 
you have destroyed the Clareus shore of the 

* I meant that the beautiful places of the world — 
Switzerland, Italy, South Germany, and so on — are, in- 
deed, the truest cathedrals— places to be reverent in, and 
to worship in ; and that we only care to drive through 
them, and to eat and drink at their most sacred places. 



ii2 Sesame anfc Xtltes 

Lake of Geneva ; there is not a quiet valley in 
England that you have not filled with bellow- 
ing fire; there is no particle left of English 
land which you have not trampled coal ashes 
into,* — nor any foreign city in which the spread 
of your presence is not marked among its fair 
old streets and happy gardens by a consuming 
white leprosy of new hotels and perfumers' 
shops : the Alps themselves, which your own 
poets used to love so reverently, you look upon 
as soaped poles in a bear-garden, which you set 
yourselves to climb, and slide down again, with 
"shrieks of delight." When you are past 
shrieking, having no human articulate voice to 
say you are glad with, you fill the quietude of 
their valleys with gunpowder blasts, and rush 
home, red with cutaneous eruption of conceit, 
and voluble with convulsive hiccough of self- 
satisfaction. I think nearly the two sorrow- 
fullest spectacles I have ever seen in humanity, 
taking the deep inner significance of them, are 



* I was singularly struck, some years ago, by finding 
all the river shores at Richmond, in Yorkshire, black in 
its earth , from the mere drift of soot-laden air from places 
many miles away. 



©I Ifttnas' treasuries 113 

the English mobs in the valley of Cbamouni, 
amusing themselves with firing rusty howitzers ; 
and the Swiss vintagers of Zurich expressing 
their Christian thanks for the gift of the vine, 
by assembling in knots in the "towers of the 
vineyards," and slowly loading and firing horse- 
pistols from morning till evening. It is pitiful 
to have dim conceptions of beauty ; more pitiful, 
it seems to me, to have conceptions like these, 
of mirth. 

36. Lastly. You despise compassion. There 
is no need of words of mine for proof of this. I 
will merely print one of the newspaper para- 
graphs which I am in the habit of cutting out 
and throwing into my store-drawer. Here is one 
from a Daily Telegraph of an early date this 
year (1867) ; (date which, though by me care- 
lessly left unmarked, is easily discoverable ; for 
on the back of the sl'.'p, there is the announce- 
ment that " yesterday the seventh of the special 
services of this year was performed by the 
Bishop of Ripon in St. Paul's";) it relates 
only one of such facts as happen now daily ; 
this, by chance having taken a form in which 



n4 Sesame anfc Xilfes 

it came before the coroner. Be sure, the 
facts themselves are written in red, in a 
book which we shall all of us, literate or 
illiterate, have to read our page of, some 
day. 

"An inquiry was held on Friday by Mr. 
Richards, deputy coroner, at the White Horse 
Tavern, Christ Church, Spitalfields, respecting 
the death of Michael Collins, aged fifty-eight 
years. Mary Collins, a miserable-looking wo- 
man, said that she lived with the deceased and his 
son in a room at 2 Cobb's Court, Christ Church. 
Deceased was a ' translator ' of boots. Witness 
went out and bought old boots ; deceased and 
his son made them into good ones, and then 
witness sold them for what she could get at the 
shops, which was very little indeed. Deceased 
and his son used to work night and day to try 
and get a little bread and tea, and pay for the 
room (25. a week), so as to keep the home to- 
gether. On Friday night week deceased got up 
from his bench and began to shiver. He threw 
down the boots, saying : ' Somebody else must 
finish them when I am gone, for I can do no 



Of Ikfnas' ^Treasuries u% 

more.' There was no fire, and he said: 'I 
would be better if I was warm.' Witness there- 
fore took two pairs of ' translated ' boots * to 
sell at the shop, but she could only get 14^. foi 
the two pairs, for the people at the shop said : 
; We must have our profit.' Witness got 141b. 
of coal, and a little tea and bread. Her son sat 
up the whole night to make the ' translations,' 
to get money, but deceased died on Saturday 
morning. The family never had enough to eat. 
— Coroner : ' It seems to me deplorable that you 
did not go into the workhouse.' Witness : 'We 
wanted the comforts of our little home.' A 
juror asked what the comforts were, for he only 
saw a little straw in the corner of the room, the 
windows of which were broken. The witness 
began to cry, and said that they had a quilt and 
other little things. The deceased said he never 
would go into the workhouse. In summer, 
when the season was good, they sometimes 
made as much as 10s. profit in the week. They 



* One of the things which we must very resolutely en- 
force, for the good of all classes, in our future arrange- 
ments, must be that they wear no " translated " articles 
of dress. See the preface. 



n6 Sesame anfc Xtltes 

then always saved towards the next week, which 
was generally a bad one. In winter they made 
not half so much. For three years they had 
been getting from bad to worse. — Cornelius 
Collins said that he had assisted his father since 
1847. They used to work so far into the night 
that both nearly lost their eyesight. Witness 
now had a film over his eyes. Five years ago 
deceased applied to the parish for aid. The re- 
lieving officer gave him a 41b. loaf, and told him 
if he came again he should 'get the stones.'* 
That disgusted deceased, and he would have 
nothing to do with them since. They got 
worse and worse until last Friday week, when 
they had not even a halfpenny to buy a candle. 

* This abbreviation of the penalty of useless labor is 
curiously coincident in verbal form with a certain pas- 
sage which some of us may remember. It may perhaps 
be well to preserve beside this paragraph another cutting 
out of my store-drawer, from the Morning Post, of about 
a parallel date, Friday, March 10, 1865 :— " The salons of 

Mme. C , who did the honors with clever imitative 

grace and elegance, were crowded with princes, dukes, 
marquises, and counts — in fact, with the same male com- 
pany as one meets at the parties of the Princess Metter- 
nich and Madame Drouyn de I/huys. Some English 
peers and members of Parliament were present, and ap- 
peared to enjoy the animated and dazzlingly improper 
scene. On the second floor the supper tables were 
loaded with every delicacy of the season. That your 
readers may form some idea of the dainty fare of the 
Parisian demi-monde, I copy the menu of the supper, 



Of IkftiQs' treasuries itj 

Deceased then lay down on the straw, and said 
he could not live till morning. — A juror : ' You 
are dying of starvation yourself, and you ought 
to go into the house until the summer.' Wit- 
ness : * If we went in we should die. When we 
come out in the summer we should be like 
people dropped from the sky. No one would 
know us, and we would not have even a room. 
I could work now if I had food, for my sight 
would get better.' Dr. G. P. Walker said de- 
ceased died from syncope, from exhaustion, 
from want of food. The deceased had had no 
bedclothes. For four months he had had noth- 
ing but bread to eat. There was not a particle 
of fat in the body. There was no disease, but 



which was served to all the guests (about 200) seated at 
four o'clock. Choice Yquein, Johannisberg, I,afitte, 
Tokay, and Champagne of the finest vintages were 
served most lavishly throughout the morning. After 
supper dancing was resumed with increased animation, 
and the ball terminated with a chaine diabolique and a 
cancan d'enfer at seven in the morning. (Morning- 
service—' Ere the fresh lawns appeared, under the open- 
ing eyelids of the Morn.') Here is the menu :— ' Con- 
somme de volatile a la Ba^ration ; 16 kors-d' ceuvres varies. 
BouchSes a la Talleyrand. Saumons froids, sauce Ravi- 
gote. Filets de bceuf en Bellevue, timbales milanaises 
chaudfroid de gibier . Dindes truffees . Path de /dies gras , 
buisssons d'ecrevisses, salades venetiennes, gelees blanches 
aux fruits, gateaux mancini, parisiens et parisiennes. 
Fromages, glacis, Ananas. Dessert.' " 



n8 Sesame anD Xflfes 

if there had been medical attendance, he might 
have survived the syncope or fainting. The 
coroner having remarked upon the painful na- 
ture of the case, the jury returned the following 
verdict : ' That deceased died from exhaustion 
from want of food and the common necessaries 
of life ; also through want of medical aid.' " 

37. " Why would witness not go into the 
workhouse? " you ask. Well, the poor seem to 
have a prejudice against the workhouse which 
the rich have not ; for of course every one who 
takes a pension from government goes into 
the workhouse on a grand scale*: only the 
workhouses for the rich do not involve the idea 
of work, and should be called play-houses. But 
the poor like to die independently, it appears ; 
perhaps if we made the play-houses for them 
pretty and pleasant enough, or gave them their 
pensions at home, and allowed them a little 
introductory peculation with the public money, 
their minds might be reconciled to the con- 



* Please observe this statement, and think of it, and 
consider how it happens that a poor old woman will be 
ashamed to take a shilling a week from the country — but 
no one is ashamed to take a pension of a thousand a year. 



©f IftftiGS' treasuries 119 

ditions. Meantime, here are the facts : we 
make our relief either so insulting to them, or 
so painful, that they rather die than take it at 
our hands ; or, for third alternative, we leave 
them so untaught and foolish that they starve 
like brute creatures, wild and dumb, not know- 
ing what to do, or what to ask. I say, you 
despise compassion ; if you did not, such a 
newspaper paragraph would be as impossible in 
a Christian country as a deliberate assassination 
permitted in its public streets.* "Christian" 
did I say ? Alas, if we were but wholesomely 
#«-Christian, it would be impossible : it is our 

* I am heartily glad to see such a paper as the Pall 
Mall Gazette established; for the power of the press 
in the hands of highly educated men, in independent 
position, and of honest purpose, may indeed become 
all that it has been hitherto vainly vaunted to be. Its 
editor will therefore, I doubt not, pardon me, in that, by 
very reason of my respect for the journal, I do not let 
pass unnoticed an article in its third number, page 5, 
which was wrong in every word of it, with the intense 
wrongness which only an honest man can achieve who 
has taken a false turn of thought in the outset, and is 
following it, regardless of consequences. It contained at 
the end this notable passage : 

"The bread of affliction, and the water of affliction- 
aye, and the bedsteads and blankets of affliction, are the 
very utmost that the law ought to give to outcasts merely 
as outcasts." I merely put beside this expression of the 
gentlemanly mind of England in 1865, a part of the mes- 
sage which Isaiah was ordered to "lift up his voice like 
a trumpet" in declaring to the gentlemen of his day: 
" Ye fast for strife, and to smite with the fist of wicked- 



120 Sesame anO %ilic& 

imaginary Christianity that helps us to commit 
these crimes, for we revel and luxuriate in our 
faith, for the lewd sensation of it ; dressing it 
up, like every thing else, in fiction. The dra- 
matic Christianity of the organ and aisle, of 
dawn-service and twilight-revival — the Chris- 
tianity which we do not fear to mix the mockery 
of, pictorially, with our play about the devil, in 
our Satanellas, — Roberts, — Fausts; chanting" 
hymns through traceried windows for back* 
ground effect, and artistically modulating the 
"Dio" through variation on variation of mim- 
icked prayer ; (while we distribute tracts, next 

ness. Is not this the fast that I have chosen, to deal thy 
bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that 
are cast out (margin ' afflicted ' ) to thy house. " The false- 
hood on which the writer had mentally founded himself, 
as previously stated by him, was this : " To confound the 
functions of the dispensers of the poor-rates with those 
of the dispensers of a charitable institution is a great 
and pernicious error." This sentence is so accurately 
and exquisitely wrong, that its substance must be thus 
reversed in our minds before we can deal with any 
existing problem of national distress. " To understand 
that the dispensers of the poor-rates are the almoners 
of the nation, and should distribute its alms with a gen- 
tleness and freedom of hand as much greater and franker 
than that possible to individual charity, as the collective 
national wisdom and power may be supposed greater 
than those of any single person, is the foundation of all 
law respecting pauperism. ' ' (Since this was written the 
Pall Mall Gazette has become a mere party paper— like 
the rest ; but it writes well, and does more good than 
mischief on the whole.) 



©f Ifttngs' treasuries 121 

day, for the benefit of uncultivated swearers, 
upon what we suppose to be the signification 
of the Third Commandment ;) — this gas-lighted 
and gas-inspired Christianity we are triumph- 
ant in, and draw back the hem of our robes 
from the touch of the heretics who dispute it. 
But to do a piece of common Christian righteous- 
ness in a plain English word or deed ; to make 
Christian law any rule of life, and found one 
National act or hope thereon,— we know too 
well what our faith comes to for that ! You 
might sooner get lightning out of incense 
smoke than true action or passion out of your 
modern English religion. You had better get 
rid of the smoke, and the organ pipes, both : 
leave them, and the Gothic windows, and the 
painted glass, to the property man ; give up 
your carburetted hydrogen ghost in one healthy 
expiration, and look after Lazarus at the door- 
step. For there is a true Church wherever one 
hand meets another helpfully, and that is the 
only holy or Mother Church which ever was, or 
ever shall be. 
38. All these pleasures, then, and all these 



122 Sesame anD Xilies 

virtues, I repeat, you nationally despise. You 
have, indeed, men among you who do not ; by 
whose work, by whose strength, by whose life, 
by whose death, you live, and never thank 
them. Your wealth, your amusement, your 
pride, would all be alike impossible, but for 
those whom you scorn or forget. The police- 
man, who is walking up and down the black 
lane all night to watch the guilt you have cre- 
ated there, and may have his brains beaten 
out, and be maimed for life, at any moment, 
and never be thanked ; the sailor wrestling 
with the sea's rage ; the quiet student poring 
over his book or his vial ; the common worker, 
without praise, and nearly without bread, ful- 
filling his task as your horses drag your carts, 
hopeless, and spurned of all : these are the 
men by whom England lives ; but they are not 
the nation ; they are only the body and nervous 
force of it, acting still from old habit in a con- 
vulsive perseverance, while the mind is gone. 
Our National wish and purpose are to be 
amused ; our National religion is the perform- 
ance of church ceremonies, and preaching of 



©f Iftfnss' Creaeurtes 123 

soporific truths (or untruths) to keep the mob 
quietly at work, while we amuse ourselves ; 
and the necessity for this amusement is fasten- 
ing on us as a feverous disease of parched 
throat and wandering eyes — senseless, disso- 
lute, merciless.* 

39. When men are rigl&ly occupied, their 
amusement grows out of their work, as the 
color-petals out of a fruitful flower ; when they 
are faithfully helpful and compassionate, all 
their emotions become steady, deep, perpetual, 
and vivifying to the soul as the natural pulse 
of the body. But now, having no true busi- 
ness, we pour our whole masculine energy into 
the false business of money-making ; and hav- 
ing no true emotion, we must have false emo- 
tions dressed up for us to play with, not inno- 
cently, as children with dolls, but guiltily and 
darkly, as the idolatrous Jews with their pict- 
ures on cavern walls, which men had to dig to 
detect. The justice we do not execute, we 
mimic in the novel and on the stage ; for the 

* How literally that word Zto-Ease, the Negation 
and impossibility of Ease, expresses the entire moral 
state of our English Industry and its Amusements. 



124 Sesame anfc %ilies 

beauty we destroy in nature, we substitute the 
metamorphosis of the pantomime, and (the 
human nature of us imperatively requiring awe 
and sorrow of some kind) for the noble grief 
we should have borne with our fellows, and 
the pure tears we should have wept with them, 
we gloat over the police court, and gather the 
night-dew of the grave. 

40. It is difficult to estimate the true signifi- 
cance of these things ; the facts are frightful 
enough ; the measure of national fault in* 
volved in them is perhaps not as great as it 
would at first seem. We permit, or cause, 
thousands of deaths daily, but we mean no 
harm ; we set fire to houses, and ravage peas- 
ants' fields ; yet we should be sorry *o find we 
had injured anybody. We are stir kind at 
heart ; still capable of virtue, but on 1 y as chil- 
dren are. Chalmers, at the end of his long 
life, having had much power with the public, 
being plagued in some serious matter by a 
reference to "public opinion," uttered the im- 
patient exclamation: "The public is just a 
great baby ! " And the reason that I have al- 



©f Ikings' treasuries 125 

lowed all these graver subjects of thought to 
mix themselves up with an inquiry into meth- 
ods of reading is that, the more I see of our 
national faults and miseries, the more they 
resolve themselves into conditions of childish 
illiterateness, and want of education in the 
most ordinary habits of thought. It is, I re- 
peat, not vice, not selfishness, not dulness of 
brain, which we have to lament ; but an un- 
reachable schoolboy's recklessness, only differ- 
ing from the true schoolboy's in its incapacity 
of being helped, because it acknowledges no 
master. 

41. There is a curious type of us given in one 
of the lovely, neglected works of the last of our 
great painters. It is a drawing of Kirk by Lons- 
dale churchyard, and of its brook, and valley, 
and hills, and folded morning sky beyond. 
And unmindful alike of these, and of the dead 
vvho have left these for other valleys and for 
other skies, a group of schoolboys have piled 
their little books upon a grave, to strike them 
off with stones. So, also, we play with the 
words of the dead that would teach us, and 



i26 Sesame anfc Xtlfes 

strike them far from us with our bitter, reck- 
less will ; little thinking that those leaves 
which the wind scatters had been piled, not 
only upon a gravestone, but upon the seal of an 
enchanted vault — nay, the gate of a great city 
of sleeping kings, who would awake for us, and 
walk with us, if we knew but how to call them 
by their names. How often, even if we lift the 
marble entrance gate, do we but wander among 
those old kings in their repose, and finger the 
robes they lie in, and stir the crowns on their 
foreheads ; and still they are silent to us, and 
seem but a dusty imagery ; because we know 
not the incantation of the heart that would 
wake them ; which, if they once heard, they 
would start up to meet us in their power of long 
ago, narrowly to look upon us, and consider 
us ; and, as the fallen kings of Hades meet the 
newly fallen, saying, "Art thou also become, 
weak as we — art thou also become one of us ? " 
so would these kings, with their undimmed ? 
unshaken diadems, meet us, saying, " Art thou 
also become pure and mighty of heart as we ? 
art thou also become one of us ? " 



©f fangs' ^Treasuries 127 

42. Mighty of heart, mighty of mind — " mag- 
nanimous," — to be this, is indeed to be great in 
life ; to become this increasingly, is, indeed, to 
"advance in life," — in life itself, — not in the 
trappings of it. My friends, do you remember 
that old Scythian custom, when the head of a 
house died ? How he was dressed in his finest 
dress, and set in his chariot, and carried about 
to his friends' houses ; and each of them placed 
him at his table's head, and all feasted in his 
presence ? Suppose it were offered to you, in 
plain words, as it is offered to you in dire facts, 
that you should gain this Scythian honor, 
gradually, while you yet thought yourself 
alive. Suppose the offer were this : You shall 
die slowly ; your blood shall daily grow cold, 
your flesh petrify, your heart beat at last only 
as a rusted group of iron valves. Your life 
shall fade from you, and sink through the 
earth into the ice of Caina ; but, day by day, 
your body shall be dressed more gayly, and set 
in higher chariots, and have more orders on its 
breast — crowns on its head, if you will. Men 
ehali bow before it, stare and shout round it. 



128 Sesame ant) Mies 

crowd after it up and down the streets ; build 
palaces for it, feast with it at their tables' heads 
all the night long ; your soul shall stay enough 
within it to know what they do, and feel the 
weight of the golden dress on its shoulders, and 
the furrow of the crown-edge on the skull ; — no 
more. Would you take the offer, verbally made 
by the death-angel ? Would the meanest among 
us take it, think you ? Yet practically and 
verily we grasp at it, every one of us, in a 
measure ; many of us grasp at it in its fulness 
of horror. Every man accepts it, who desires 
to advance in life without knowing what life 
is ; who means only that he is to get more 
horses, and more footmen, and more fortune, 
and more public honor, and — not more personal 
soul. He only is advancing in life, whose heart 
is getting softer, whose blood warmer, whose 
brain quicker, whose spirit is entering into 
Iviving peace.* And the men who have this 
life in them are the true lords or kings of the 
earth — they, and they only. All other kingships, 
so far as they are true, are only the practical 

* " to fie 4>p6vi)txa tov nvevfx-aTOi £<o>j <cai eiprjvq" 



Ot Ikings' {Treasuries 129 

issue and expression of theirs ; if less than this, 
they are either dramatk royalties, — costly 
shows, set off, indeed, with real jewels instead 
of tinsel- -but still only the toys of nations ; or 
else, they are no royalties at all, but tyrannies, 
or the mere active and practical issue of na- 
tional folly ; for which reason I have said of 
them elsewhere : "Visible governments are the 
toys of some nations, the diseases of others, 
the harness of some, the burdens of more." 

43. But I have no words for the wonder with 
which I hear Kinghood still spoken of, even 
among thoughtful men, as if governed nations 
were a personal property, and might be bought 
and sold, or otherwise acquired, as sheep, of 
whose flesh their king was to feed, and whose 
fleece he was to gather ; as if Achilles' indig- 
nant epithet of base kings, "people-eating," 
were the constant and proper title of all mon- 
jirchs ; and enlargement of a king's dominion 
meant the same thing as the increase of a 
private man's estate ! Kings who think so, 
however powerful, can no more be the true 
kings of the nation than gadflies are the kings 



130 Sesame anfc Xtlles 

of a horse ; they suck it, and they drive it wild> 
but do not guide it. They, and their courts, 
and their armies are, if one could see clearly, 
only a large species of marsh mosquito, with 
bayonet proboscis and melodious, band-mas 
tered, trumpeting in the summer air ; the twi- 
light being, perhaps, sometimes fairer, but 
hardly more wholesome, for its glittering mists 
of midge companies. The true kings, mean- 
while, rule quietly, if at all, and hate ruling ; 
too many of them make il gran refiMo ; and 
if they do not, the mob, as soon as they are 
likely to become useful to it, is pretty sure to 
make its "gran refiuto " of them. 

44. Yet the visible king may also be a true 
one, some day, if ever day comes when he will 
estimate his dominion by the force of it, — not 
the geographical boundaries. It matters very 
"iittle whether Trent cuts you a cantel out here s 
or Rhine rounds you a castle less there. But it 
does matter to you, king of men, whether you 
can verily say to this man, "Go," and he 
goeth ; and to another, " Come," and he 
cometh. Whether you can turn your people, 



©f Iftfnga' treasuries 131 

as you can Trent — and where it is that you bid 
them come, and where go. It matters to you, 
king of men, whether your people hate you, 
and die by you, or love you, and live by you. 
You may measure your dominion by multitudes 
better than by miles ; and count degrees of love 
latitude, not from, but to, a wonderfully warm 
and infinite equator. 

45. Measure ! nay you cannot measure. Who 
shall measure the difference between the power 
of those who "do and teach," and who are 
greatest in the kingdoms of earth, as of heaven, 
—and the power of those who undo, and con- 
sume, whose power, at the fullest, is only the 
power of the moth and the rust ? Strange ! 
to think how the Moth-kings lay up treasures 
for the moth ; and the Rust-kings, who are to 
their peoples' strength as rust to armor, lay up 
treasures for the rust ; and the Robber-kings, 
treasures for the robber ; but how few kings 
have ever laid up treasures that needed no 
guarding — treasures of which, the more thieves 
there were, the better ! Broidered robe, only 
to be rent ; helm and sword, only to be dimmed ; 



i3a Sesame anD Xflfea 

jewel and gold, only to be scattered ; — there 
have been three kinds of kings who have 
gathered these. Suppose there ever should 
arise a Fourth order of kings, who had read, in 
some obscure writing of long ago, that there 
was a Fourth kind of treasure, which the jewel 
and gold could not equal, neither should it be 
valued with pure gold. A web made fair in the 
weaving, by Athena's shuttle ; an armor, forged 
in divine fire by Vulcanian force — a gold to be 
mined in the sun's red heart, where he sets 
over the Delphian cliffs ; — deep-pictured tissue, 
impenetrable armor, potable gold ! — the three 
great Angels of Conduct, Toil, and Thought, 
still calling to us, and waiting at the posts of 
our doors, to lead us, with their winged power, 
and guide us, with their unerring eyes, by the 
path which no fowl knoweth, and which the 
vulture's eye has not seen ! Suppose kings 
should ever arise, who heard and believed this 
word and at last gathered and brought forth 
treasures of — Wisdom — for their people ? 

46. Think what an amazing business that 
would be ! How inconceivable, in the state of 



©f IKinas' treasuries 133 

our present national wisdom ! That we should 
bring up our peasants to a book exercise in- 
stead of a bayonet exercise ! — organize, drill, 
maintain with pay, and good generalship, ar- 
mies of thinkers, instead of armies of stabbers ! 
—find national amusement in reading-rooms 
as well as rifle-grounds ; give prizes for a fair 
shot at a fact, as well as for a leaden splash on 
a target. What an absurd idea it seems, put 
fairly in words, that the wealth of the capital- 
ists of civilized nations should ever come to 
support literature instead of war ! 

47. Have yet patience with me, while I read 
you a single sentence out of the only book, 
properly to be called a book, that I have yet 
written myself, the one that will stand (if any 
thing stand) surest and longest of all work of 
mine. 

" It is one very awful form of the operation 
of wealth in Europe that it is entirely capital- 
ists' wealth which supports unjust wars. Just 
wars do not need so much money to support 
them ; for most of the men who wage such, 
wage them gratis ; but for an unjust war, men's 



i34 Sesame anfc ILilfes 

bodies and souls have both to be bought ; and 
the best tools of war for them besides, which 
makes such war costly to the maximum ; not 
to speak of the cost of base fear, and angry 
suspicion, between nations which have not 
grace nor honesty enough in all their multi- 
tudes to buy an hour's peace of mind with ; as, 
at present France and England, purchasing of 
each other ten millions' sterling worth of con- 
sternation, annually (a remarkably light crop, 
half thorns and half aspen leaves, sown, reaped, 
and granaried by the ' science ' of the modern 
political economist, teaching covetousness in- 
stead of truth). And, all unjust war being sup- 
portable, if not by pillage of the enemy, only 
by loans from capitalists, these loans are repaid 
by subsequent taxation of the people, who ap- 
pear to have no will in the matter, the capital- 
ists' will being the primary root of the war ; but 
its real root is the covetousness of the whole 
nation, rendering it incapable of faith, frank- 
ness, or justice, and bringing about, therefore, 
in due time, his own separate loss and punish- 
ment to each person." 



Of IKtngs' treasuries 13s 

48. France and England literally, observe, 
buy panic of each other ; they pay, each of 
them, for ten thousand-thousand-pounds'-wortb 
of terror a year. Now suppose, instead of 
juying these ten millions' worth of panic an- 
nually, they made up their minds to be at peace 
with each other, and buy ten millions' worth 
of knowledge annually ; and that each nation 
spent its ten thousand thousand pounds a year 
in founding royal libraries, royal art-galleries, 
royal museums, royal gardens, and places of 
rest. Might it not be better somewhat for both 
French and English ? 

49. It will be long, yet, before that comes to 
pass. Nevertheless, I hope it will not be long 
before royal or national libraries will be 
founded in every considerable city, with a royal 
series of books in them ; the same series in 
every one of them, chosen books, the best in 
every kind, prepared for that national series in 
the most perfect way possible ; their text 
printed all on leaves of equal size, broad of 
margin, and divided into pleasant volumes, 
light in the hand, beautiful, and strong, and 



136 Sesame anO Xiltes 

thorough as examples of binders' work ; and 
that these great libraries will be accessible to all 
clean and orderly persons at all times of the 
day and evening, strict law being enforced for 
this cleanliness and quietness. 

I could shape for you other plans, for art- 
galleries, and for natural-history galleries, and 
for many precious— many, it seems to me, 
needful — things; but this book plan is the 
easiest and needfulest, and would prove a con- 
siderable tonic to what we call our British con- 
stitution, which has fallen dropsical of late, 
and has an evil thirst, and evil hunger, and 
wants healthier feeding. You have got its 
corn laws repealed for it ; try if you cannot 
get corn laws established for it, dealing in 
a better bread, — bread made of that old en- 
chanted Arabian grain, the Sesame, which 
opens doors ; — doors, not of robbers', but of 
Kings', Treasuries. 

50. Note to fl 30. — Respecting the increase of 
rent by the deaths of the poor, for evidence of 
which see the preface to the Medical officer's 
report to the Privy Council, just published, 



®f IkinQS' treasuries 137 

there are suggestions in its preface which will 
make some stir among us, I fancy, respecting 
which let me note these points following : 

There are two theories on the subject of land 
now abroad, and in contention ; both false. 

The first is that, by Heavenly law, there have 
always existed, and must continue to exist, a 
certain number of hereditarily sacred persons 
to whom the earth, air, and water of the 
world belong, as personal property ; of which 
earth, air, and water, these persons may, at 
their pleasure, permit, or forbid, the rest 
of the human race to eat, breathe, or to 
drink. This theory is not for many years 
longer tenable. The adverse theory is that a 
division of the land of the world among the 
mob of the world would immediately elevate 
the said mob into sacred personages ; that 
houses would then build themselves, and corn 
grow of itself; and that everybody would be 
able to live without doing any work for his liv- 
ing. This theory would also be found highly 
untenable in practice. 

It will, however, require some rough experi- 



138 Sesame an£> TLiliee 

merits, and rougher catastrophes, before the 
generality of persons will be convinced that no 
law concerning any thing, least of all concern- 
ing land, for either holding or dividing it, or 
renting it high, or renting it low, would be of 
the smallest ultimate use to the people, so 
long as the general contest for life, and for the 
means of life, remains one of mere brutal com- 
petition. That contest, in an unprincipled 
nation, will take one deadly form or another, 
whatever laws you make against it. For in- 
stance, it would be an entirely wholesome law 
for England, if it could be carried, that maxi- 
mum limits should be assigned to incomes ac- 
cording to classes ; and that every nobleman's 
income should be paid to him as a fixed salary 
or pension by the nation ; and not squeezed by 
him in variable sums, at discretion, out of the 
tenants of his land. But if you could get such 
a law passed to-morrow, and if, which would be 
farther necessary, you could fix the value of the 
assigned incomes by making a given weight of 
pure bread for a given sum, a twelvemonth 
would not pass before another currency would 



Qt Ikims* treasuries 139 

have been tacitly established, and the power of 
accumulative wealth would have reasserted 
itself in some other article, or some other 
imaginary sign. There is only one cure for 
public distress — and that is public education, 
directed to make men thoughtful, merciful, and 
just. There are, indeed, many laws conceivable 
which would gradually better and strengthen the 
national temper ; but, for the most part, they 
are such as the national temper must be much 
bettered before it would bear. A nation in its 
youth may be helped by laws, as a weak child 
by back-boards, but when it is old it cannot that 
way straighten its crooked spine. 

And besides ; the problem of land, at its 
worst, is a bye one ; distribute the earth as you 
will, the principal question remains inexorable, 
— Who is to dig it ? Which of us, in brief 
words, is to do the hard and dirty work for the 
rest — and for what pay ? Who is to do the 
pleasant and clean work, and for what pay ? 
Who is to do no work, and for what pay ? And 
there are curious moral and religious questions 
connected with these. How far is it lawful to 



i4o Sesame anfc Xtltes 

suck a portion of the soul out of a great many- 
persons, in order to put the abstracted psychi- 
cal quantities together and make one very 
beautiful or ideal soul ? If we had to deal with 
mere blood, instead of spirit (and the thing 
might literally be done — as it has been done 
with infants before now), — so that it were pos- 
sible by taking a certain quantity of blood from 
the arms of a given number of the mob, and 
putting it all into one person, to make a more 
azure-blooded gentleman of him, the thing 
would of course be managed ; but secretly, I 
should conceive. But now, because it is brain 
and soul that we abstract, not visible blood, 
it can be done quite openly, and we live, we 
gentlemen, on delicatest prey, after the manner 
of weasels ; that is to say, we keep a certain 
number of clowns digging and ditching, and 
generally stupefied, in order that we, being fed 
gratis, may have all the thinking and feeling to 
ourselves. Yet there is a great deal to be said 
for this. A highly bred and trained English, 
French, Austrian, or Italian gentleman (much 
more a lady) is a great production, — a better 



©f Ikinas' {Treasuries 141 

production thaii most statues ; being beautifully 
colored as well as shaped, and plus all the 
brains ; a glorious thing to look at, a wonderful 
thing to talk to ; and you cannot have it, any 
more than a pyramid or a church, but by sacri- 
fice of much contributed life. And it is, per- 
haps, better to build a beautiful human creature 
than a beautiful dome or steeple — and more 
delightful to look up reverently to a creature 
far above us, than to a wall ; only the beautiful 
human creature will have some duties to do in 
return — duties of living belfry and rampart — of 
which presently. 




LECTURE II.— UUES. 

OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 



"Be thou glad, O thirsting Desert ; let the desert be 
made cheerful, and bloom as the lily ; and the barren 
places of Jordan shall run wild with wood." — Isaiah 
i. (Septuagint.) 



51. It will, perhaps, be well, as this Lecture 
is the sequel of one previously given, that I 
should shortly state to you my general inten- 
tion in both. The questions specially proposed 
to you in the first, namely, How and "What to 
Read, rose out of a far deeper one, which it was 
my endeavor to make you propose earnestly to 
yourselves, namely, Why to Read. I want 
you to feel, with me, that whatever advantages 
we possess in the present day in the diffusion 
of education and of literature, can only be 



©t Queens' ©ar&ens u* 

rightly used by any of us when we have appre- 
hended clearly what education is to lead to, and 
literature to teach. I wish you to see that both 
well-directed moral training and well-chosen 
reading lead to the possession of a power over 
the ill-guided and illiterate, which is, according 
to the measure of it, in the truest sense, kingly ; 
conferring indeed the purest kingship that can 
exist among men : too many other kingships 
(however distinguished by visible insignia or 
material power) being either spectral or tyran- 
nous; — spectral — that is to say, aspects and 
shadows only of royalty, hollow as death, and 
which only the ' ' likeness of a kingly crown 
have on " ; or else tyrannous — that is to say, 
substituting their own will for the law of jus- 
tice and love by which all true kings rule. 

52. There is, then, I repeat — and as I want 
to leave this idea with you, I begin with it, and 
shall end with it— only one pure kind of king- 
ship ; an inevitable and eternal kind, crowned 
or not : the kingship, namely, which consists 
in a stronger moral state, and a truer thought- 
ful state, than that of others ; enabling you, 



144 Sesame an& Xities 

therefore, to guide, or to raise them. Observe 
that word "state" ; we have got into a loose 
way of using it. It means literally the stand- 
ing and stability of a thing ; and you have the 
full force of it in the derived word " statue "— 
"the immovable thing." A king's majesty or 
" state," then, and the right of his kingdom to 
be called a state, depends on the movelessness 
of both : — without tremor, without quiver of 
balance ; established and enthroned upon a 
foundation of eternal law which nothing can 
alter, nor overthrow. 

53. Believing that all literature and all edu- 
cation are only useful so far as they tend to 
confirm this calm, beneficent, and there/ore 
kingly power — first, over ourselves, and, 
through ourselves, over all around us, I am 
now going to ask you to consider with me far- 
ther, what special portion or kind of this royal 
authority, arising out of noble education, may 
rightly be possessed by women ; and how far 
they also are called to a true queenly power. 
Not in their households merely, but over all 
within their sphere. And in what sense, if they 



Of Queens' (3arDetta 145 

rightly understood and exercised this royal or 
gracious influence, the order and beauty in 
duced by such benignant power would justifj 
us in speaking of the territories over whicr 
each of them reigned, as "Queens' Gardens.' 

54. And here, in the very outset, we are met 
by a far deeper question, which — strange though 
this may seem — remains among many of us 
yet quite undecided, in spite of its infinite 
importance. 

We cannot determine what the queenly power 
of women should be, until we are agreed what 
their ordinary power should be. We cannot 
consider how education may fit them for any 
widely extending duty, until we are agreed 
what is their true constant duty. And there 
never was a time when wilder words were 
spoken, or more vain imagination permitted, 
respecting this question — quite vital to all social 
happiness. The relations of the womanly to 
the manly nature, their different capacities of 
intellect or of virtue, seem never to have been 
yet estimated with entire consent. We hear of 
the " mission " and of the "rights " of Woman, 



146 Sesame anD Xilies 

as if these could ever be separate from the mis- 
sion and the rights of Man ; — as if she and her 
lord were creatures of independent kind, and 
of irreconcilable claim. This, at least, is wrong. 
And not less wrong — perhaps even more fool- 
ishly wrong (for I will anticipate thus far what 
I hope to prove) — is the idea that woman is 
only the shadow and attendant image of her 
lord, owing him a thoughtless and servile obedi- 
ence, and supported altogether in her weakness 
by the pre-eminence of his fortitude. 

This, I say, is the most foolish of all errors 
respecting her who was made to be the help- 
mate of man. As if he could be helped effect- 
ively by a shadow, or worthily by a slave ! 

55. Let us try, then, whether we cannot get 
at some clear and harmonious idea (it must be 
harmonious if it is true) of what womanly mina 
and virtue are in power and office, with respect 
to man's ; and how their relations, rightly ac- 
cepted, aid and increase the vigor and honor 
and authority of both. 

And now I must repeat one thing I said in 
the last lecture : namely, that the first use of 



©f (SUeena' (Saroens 147 

education was to enable us to consult with the 
wisest and the greatest men on all points of 
earnest difficulty. That to use books rightly 
was to go to them for help ; to appeal to them, 
when our own knowledge and power of thought 
failed ; to be led by them into wider sight,— 
purer conception, — than our own, and to receive 
from them the united sentence of the judges 
and councils of all time, against our solitary 
and unstable opinion. 

L,et us do this now. Let us see whether the 
greatest, the wisest, the purest-hearted of all 
ages are agreed in any wise on this point : let 
us hear the testimony they have left respecting 
what they held to be the true dignity of woman, 
and her mode of help to man. 

56. And first let us take Shakespeare. 

Note broadly in the outset, Shakespeare has 
no heroes ; — he has only heroines. There is 
not one entirely heroic figure in all his plays, 
except the slight sketch of Henry the Fifth, 
exaggerated for the purposes of the stage ; and 
the still slighter Valentine in "The Two Gentle- 
men of Verona." In his labored and perfect 



148 Sesame anD Xilfee 

plays you have no hero. Othello would have 
been one, if his simplicity had not been so 
great as to leave him the prey of every base 
practice round him ; but he is the only example 
even approximating to the heroic type. Corio- 
lanus, — Caesar, — Antony, stand in flawed 
strength, and fall by their vanities ; — Hamlet 
is indolent, and drowsily speculative ; Romeo 
an impatient boy ; the Merchant of Venice 
languidly submissive to adverse fortune ; Kent, 
in "King Lear," is entirely noble at heart, 
but too rough and unpolished to be of true 
use at the critical time, and he sinks into the 
office of a servant only. Orlando, no less noble, 
is yet the despairing toy of chance, followed, 
comforted, saved, by Rosalind. Whereas there 
is hardly a play that has not a perfect woman 
in it, steadfast in grave hope and errorless 
purpose : Cordelia, Desdemona, Isabella, 
Hermione, Imogen, Queen Katherine, Perdita, 
Sylvia, Viola, Rosalind, Helena, and last, 
and perhaps loveliest, Virgilia, are all fault- 
less, — conceived in the highest heroic type 
of humanity. 



©f Queens' (Barrens 149 

57. Then observe, secondly, 

The catastrophe of every play is caused al- 
ways by the folly or fault of a man ; the re- 
demption, if there be any, is by the wisdom and 
virtue of a woman, and failing that, there is 
none. The catastrophe of King I,ear is owing 
to his own want of judgment, his impatient 
vanity, his misunderstanding of his children ; 
the virtue of his one true daughter would have 
saved him from all the injuries of the others, 
unless he had cast her away from him ; as it is, 
she all but saves him. 

Of Othello I need not trace the tale ; nor the 
one weakness of his so mighty love ; nor the in- 
feriority of his perceptive intellect to that even 
of the second woman character in the play, the 
Emilia who dies in wild testimony against his 
error : "Oh, murderous coxcomb ! What should 
such a fool Do with so good a wife ? " 

In " Romeo and Juliet," the wise and brave 
stratagem of the wife is brought to ruinous 
issue by the reckless impatience of her husband. 
In " Winter's Tale " and in " Cymbeline," the 
happiness and existence of two princely house 



150 Seeamc anD Xtlies 

holds, lost through long years, and imperilled 
to the death by the folly and obstinacy of the 
husbands, and redeemed at last by the queenly 
patience and wisdom of the wives. In " Meas- 
ure for Measure," the foul injustice of the judge 
and the foul cowardice of the brother are op- 
posed to the victorious truth and adamantine 
purity of a woman. In " Coriolanus, " the 
mother's counsel, acted upon in time, would 
have saved her son from all evil ; his momen- 
tary forgetfulness of it is his ruin ; her prayer, 
at last granted, saves him — not, indeed, from 
death, but from the curse of living as the de 
stroyer of his country. 

And what shall I say of Julia, constant against 
the fickleness of a lover who is a mere wicked 
child ? — of Helena, against the petulance and in- 
sult of a careless youth ? — of the patience of 
Hero, the passion of Beatrice, and the calmly 
devoted wisdom of the " unlessoned girl," who 
appears among the helplessness, the blindness, 
and the vindictive passions of men, as a gentle 
angel, bringing courage and safety by her pres- 
ence, and defeating the worst malignities of 



tot (SUieens' (Salens 151 

crime by what women are fancied most to fail 
in — precision and accuracy of thought. 

58. Observe, further, among all the principal 
figures in Shakespeare's plays, there is only one 
weak woman — Ophelia ; and it is because she 
fails Hamlet at the critical moment, and is not, 
and cannot in her nature be, a guide to him 
when he needs her most, that all the bitter 
catastrophe follows. Finally, though there are 
three wicked women among the principal fig- 
ures, Lady Macbeth, Regan, and Goneril, they 
are felt at once to be frightful exceptions to the 
ordinary laws of life ; fatal in their influence 
also in proportion to the power for good which 
they have abandoned. 

Such, in broad light, is Shakespeare's testi- 
mony to the position and character of women 
in humble life. He represents them as infalli- 
bly faithful and wise counsellors, — incor r oti- 
bly just and pure examples, — strong alw s to 
sanctify, even when they cannot save. 

59. Not as in any wise comparable in knowl- 
edge of the nature of man, — still less in his un 
derstanding of the causes and courses of fate, — 



152 Sesame anfc TLiliee 

but only as the writer who has given us the 
broadest view of the conditions and modes of 
ordinary thought in modern society, I ask you 
next to receive the witness of Walter Scott. 

I put aside his merely romantic prose writ- 
ings as of no value ; and though the early ro- 
mantic poetry is very beautiful, its testimony is 
of no weight, other than that of a boy's ideal. 
But his true works, studied from Scottish life, 
bear a true witness ; and, in the whole range 
of these, there are but three men who reach the 
heroic type * — Dandie Dinmont, Rob Roy, and 
Claverhouse : of these, one is a border farmer ; 
another a freebooter, the third a soldier in a bad 
cause. And these touch the ideal of heroism 
only in their courage and faith, together with a 
strong, but uncultivated, or mistakenly applied, 
intellectual power ; while his younger men are 

: I ought, in order to make this assertion fully under- 
stood, to have noted the various weaknesses which lower 
the ideals of other great characters of men in the Waver- 
ley novels— the selfishness and narrowness of thought 
in Redgauntlet, the weak religious enthusiasm in 
Edward Glendinning, and the like ; and I ought to 
have noticed that there are several quite perfect charac- 
ters sketched sometimes in the backgrounds ; three— let 
us accept joyously this courtesy to England and her sol- 
diers — are English officers : Colonel Gardiner, Colonel 
Talbot, and Colonel Mannering. 



Qt (Slueens' (Barrens 153 

the gentlemanly playthings of fantastic fortune, 
and only by aid (or accident) of that fortune, 
survive, not vanquish, the trials they involun- 
tarily sustain. Of any disciplined, or consist- 
ent character, earnest in a purpose wisely con- 
ceived, or dealing with forms of hostile evil, 
definitely challenged and resolutely subdued, 
there is no trace in his conceptions of young 
men. Whereas in his imaginations of women, 
— in the characters of Ellen Douglas, of Flora 
Maclvor, Rose Bradwardine, Catherine Seyton, 
Diana Vernon, I/ilias Redgauntlet, Alice Bridge- 
north, Alice Lee, and Jeanie Deans, — with end- 
less varieties of grace, tenderness, and intel- 
lectual power we find in all a quite infallible 
and inevitable sense of dignity and justice ; a 
fearless, instant, and untiring self-sacrifice to 
even the appearance of duty, much more to its 
real claims ; and, finally, a patient wisdom of 
deeply restrained affection, which does infinitely 
more than protect its objects from a momentary 
error ; it gradually forms, animates, and exalts 
the characters of the unworthy lovers, until, at 
the close of the tale, we are just able, and no 



T54 Sesame anD Xiltes 

more, to take patience in hearing of their un 
merited success. 

So that, in all cases, with Scott as with 
Shakespeare, it is the woman who watches 
over, teaches, and guides the youth ; it is 
never, by any chance, the youth who watches 
over or educates his mistress. 

60. Next, take, though more briefly, graver 
testimony — that of the great Italians and 
Greeks. You know well the plan of Dante's 
great poem — that it is a love poem to his dead 
lady ; a song of praise for her watch over his 
soul. Stooping only to pity, never to love, she 
yet saves him from destruction — saves him from 
hell. He is going eternally astray in despair : 
she comes down from heaven to his help, and 
throughout the ascents of Paradise is his teach- 
er, interpreting for him the most difficult truths, 
divine and human, and leading him, with re- 
buke upon rebuke, from star to star. 

I do not insist upon Dante's conception ; if I 
began I could not cease : besides, you might 
think this a wild imagination of one poet's 
heart. So I will rather read to you a few verses 



Ot (SUieens' <3arDens 155 

of the deliberate writing of a knight of Pisa to 
his living lady, wholly characteristic of the feel- 
ing of all the noblest men of the thirteenth 
or early fourteenth century, preserved among 
many other such records of knightly honor and 
love, which Dante Rossetti has gathered for us 
from among the early Italian poets. 

For lo ! thy law is passed 
That this my love should manifestly be 

To serve and honor thee : 
And so I do ; and my delight is full, 
Accepted for the servant of thy rule. 

Without almost, I am all rapturous, 

Since thus my will was set 
To serve, thou flower of joy, thine excellence : 
Nor ever seems it any thing could rouse 

A pain or regret, 
But on thee dwells mine every thought and sense ; 
Considering that from thee all virtues spread 

As from a fountain head, — 
That in thy gift is wisdom's best avail, 

And honor without fail ; 
With whom each sovereign good dwells separate, 
Fulfilling the perfection of thy state. 

I^ady, since I conceived 
Thy pleasurable aspect in my heart, 

My life has been apart 
In shining brightness and the place of truth ; 



156 Sesame and Xflfes 

Which till that time, good sooth, 
Groped among shadows in a darken 'd place, 

Where many hours and days 
It hardly ever had remember'd good. 

But now my servitude 
Is thine, and I am full of joy and rest. 

A man from a wild beast 
Thou madest me, since for thj' love I lived. 

61. You may think, perhaps, a Greek knight 
would have had a lower estimate of women than 
this Christian lover. His spiritual subjection 
to them was indeed not so absolute ; but as 
regards their own personal character, it was 
only because you could not have followed me 
so easily, that I did not take the Greek women 
instead of Shakespeare's ; and instance, for 
chief ideal types of human beauty and faith, 
the simple mother's and wife's heart of An- 
dromache ; the divine, yet rejected wisdom of 
Cassandra ; the playful kindness and simple 
princess-life of happy Nausicaa; the house- 
wifely calm of that of Penelope, with its watch 
upon the sea ; the ever patient, fearless, hope- 
lessly devoted piety of the sister, and daughter, 
in Antigone; the bowing down of Iphigenia, 
lamb-like and silent ; and, finally, the expecta- 



©f (SUteene' (Barrens 157 

tioti of the resurrection, made clear to the soul 
of the Greeks in the return from her grave of 
that Alcestis, who, to save her husband, had 
passed calmly through the bitterness of death. 

62. Now I could multiply witness upon wit- 
ness of this kind upon you if I had time. I 
would take Chaucer, and show you why he 
wrote a Legend of Good Women, but no Le- 
gend of Good Men. I would take Spenser, and 
show you how all his fairy knights are some- 
times deceived and sometimes vanquished ; but 
the soul of Una is never darkened, and the 
spear of Britomart is never broken. Nay, I 
could go back into the mythical teaching of 
the most ancient times, and show you how the 
great people — by one of whose princesses it 
was appointed that the Lawgiver of all the 
earth should be educated, rather than by his 
own kindred, — how that great Egyptian peo- 
ple, wisest then of nations, gave to their Spirit 
of Wisdom the form of a woman ; and into her 
hand, for a symbol, the weaver's shuttle ; and 
how the name and the form of that spirit, 
adopted, believed, and obeyed by the Greeks, 



158 Sesame anfc Xilfes 

became that Athena of the olive-helm, and 
cloudy shield, to faith in whom you owe, down 
to this date, whatever you hold most precious in 
art, in literature, or in types of national virtue. 

63. But I will not wander into this distant 
and mythical element ; I will only ask you to 
give its legitimate value to the testimony of 
these great poets and men of the world, — con- 
sistent as you see it is, on this head. I will ask 
you whether it can be supposed that these men, 
in the main work of their lives, are amusing 
themselves with a fictitious and idle view of 
the relations between man and woman ; — nay, 
worse than fictitious or idle ; for a thing may 
be imaginary, yet desirable, if it were possible : 
but this, their ideal of women, is, according to 
our common idea of the marriage relation, 
wholly undesirable. The woman, we say, is 
not to guide, nor even to think, for herself. 
The man is always to be the wiser ; he is to be 
the thinker, the ruler, the superior in knowl 
edge and discretion, as in power. 

64. Is it not somewhat important to make- 
up our minds on this matter ? Are all these 



©f (Slueens' (Barrens 159 

great men mistaken, or are we ? Are Shake- 
speare and JEJschylus, Dante and Homer, 
merely dressing dolls for us ; or, worse than 
dolls, unnatural visions, the realization of 
which, were it possible, would bring anarchy 
into all households and ruin into all affections ? 
Nay, if you could suppose this, take lastly the 
evidence of facts, given by the human heart 
itself. In all Christian ages which have been 
remarkable for their purity or progress, there 
has been absolute yielding of obedient devo- 
tion, by the lover, to his mistress. I say 
obedient; — not merely enthusiastic and wor- 
shipping in imagination, but entirely subject, 
receiving from the beloved woman, however 
young, not only the encouragement, the praise, 
and the reward of all toil, but, so far as any 
choice is open, or any question difficult of deci- 
sion, the direction of all toil. That chivalry, to 
the abuse and dishonor of which are attributable 
primarily whatever is cruel in war, unjust in 
peace, or corrupt and ignoble in domestic rela- 
tions ; and to the original purity and power of 
which we owe the defence alike of faith, of law, 



160 Sesame anfc XUfes 

and of love ; — that chivalry, I say, in its very 
first conception of honorable life, assumes the 
subjection of the young knight to the com- 
mand—should it even be the command in 
caprice — of his lady. It assumes this, because 
its masters knew that the first and necessary 
impulse of every truly taught and knightly 
heart is this of blind service to its lady ; that 
where that true faith and captivity are not, all 
wayward and wicked passions must be; and 
that in this rapturous obedience to the single 
love of his youth, is the sanctification of all 
man's strength, and the continuance of all his 
purposes. And this, not because such obedi- 
ence would be safe, or honorable, were it ever 
rendered to the unworthy ; but because it ought 
to be impossible for every noble youth — it is 
impossible for every one rightly trained — to 
love any one whose gentle counsel he cannot 
trust, or whose prayerful command he can hesi- 
tate to obey. 

65. I do not insist by any farther argument 
on this, for I think it should commend itself at 
once to your knowledge of what has been and to 



©f (aueens* <3arden6 161 

your feeling of what should be. You cannot 
think that the buckling on of the knight's 
armor by his lady's hand was a mere caprice 
of romantic fashion. It is the type of an eter- 
nal truth — that the soul's armor is never well 
set to the heart unless a woman's hand has 
braced it; and it is only when she braces it 
too loosely that the honor of manhood fails. 
Know you not those lovely lines — I would 
they were learned by all youthful ladies of 
England : 

" Ah, wasteful woman J— she who may 
On her sweet self set her own price, 
Knowing he cannot choose but pay- 
How has she cheapen'd Paradise ! 
How given for nought her priceless gift, 
How spoiled the bread and spill'd the wine, 
Which, spent with due, respective thrift, 
Had made brutes men, and men divine 1 " * 

66. Thus much, then, respecting the relations 
of lovers I believe you will accept. But what 
we too often doubt is the fitness of the con- 

* Coventry Patmore. You cannot read him too often 
or too carefully ; as far as I know he is the only living 
poet who always strengthens and purifies ; the others 
sometimes darken, and nearly always depress and dis 
courage, the imagination they deeply seize. 



i62 Sesame an& Xilies 

tinuance of such a relation throughout the 
whole of human life. We think it right in the 
lover and mistress, not in the husband and wife. 
That is to say, we think that a reverent and 
tender duty is due to one whose affection we 
still doubt, and whose character we as yet do 
but partially and distantly discern ; and that 
this reverence and duty are to be withdrawn 
when the affection has become wholly and 
limitlessly our own, and the character has been 
so sifted and tried that we fear not to entrust it 
with the happiness of our lives. Do you not 
see how ignoble this is, as well as how unrea- 
sonable ? Do you not feel that marriage— 
when it is marriage at all — is only the seal 
which marks the vowed transition of tempo 
rary into untiring service, and of fitful into 
eternal love ? 

67. But how, you will ask, is the idea of this 
guiding function of the woman reconcilable 
with a true wifely subjection ? Simply in that 
it is a guiding ; not a determining, function. I^et 
me try to show you briefly how these powers 
seem to be rightly distinguishable. 



©t Queens* (BarDens 163 

We are foolish, and without excuse foolish, 
in speaking of the " superiority " of one sex to 
the other, as if they could be compared in 
similar things. Each has what the other has 
not : each completes the other, and is com- 
pleted by the other : they are in nothing alike, 
and the happiness and perfection of both de- 
pends on each asking and receiving from the 
other what the other only can give. 

68. Now their separate characters are briefly 
these. The man's power is active, progressive, 
defensive. He is eminently the doer, the crea- 
tor, the discoverer, the defender. His intellect 
is for speculation and invention ; his energy for 
adventure, for war, and for conquest, wherever 
war is just, wherever conquest necessary. But 
the woman's power is for rule, not for battle, — 
and her intellect is not for invention or crea- 
tion, but for sweet ordering, arrangement, and 
decision. She sees the qualities of things, 
their claims, and their places. Her great 
function is Praise : she enters into no contest, 
but infallibly judges the crown of contest. By 
her office, and place, she is protected from all 



164 Sesame anfc Xtltes 

danger and temptation. The man, in his rough 
work in open world, must encounter all peril 
and trial : — to him, therefore, must be the fail 
ure, the offence, the inevitable error : often he 
must be wounded or subdued, often misled, 
and always hardened. But he guards the wo- 
man from all this ; within his house, as ruled 
by her, unless she herself has sought it, need 
enter no danger, no temptation, no cause of 
error or offence. This is the true nature of 
home — it is the place of Peace ; the shelter, not 
only from all injury, but from all terror, doubt, 
and division. In so far as it is not this, it is not 
home : so far as the anxieties of the outer life 
penetrate into it, and the inconsistently minded, 
unknown, unloved, or hostile society of the 
outer world is allowed by either husband or 
wife to cross the threshold, it ceases to be 
home ; it is then only a part of that outei 
world which you have roofed over, and lighted 
fire in. But so far as it is a sacred place, a 
vestal temple, a temple of the hearth watched 
over by Household Gods, before whose faces 
none may come but those whom they can re- 



Ot (SUieens* (Barrens 165 

ceive with love, — so far as it is this, and roof 
and fire are types only of a nobler shade and 
light — shade as of the rock in a weary land, 
and light as of the Pharos in the stormy sea, — 
so far it vindicates the name, and fulfils the 
praise, of home. 

And wherever a true wife comes, this home is 
always round her. The stars only may be over 
her head ; the glowworm in the night-cold 
grass may be the only fire at her foot ; but 
home is yet wherever she is : and for a noble 
woman it stretches far round her, better than 
ceiled with cedar, or painted with vermilion, 
shedding its quiet light far, for those who else 
were homeless. 

69. This, then, I believe to be — will you not 
admit it to be? — the woman's true place and 
power. But do not you see that to fulfil this, 
she must — as far as one can use such terms of a 
human creature— be incapable of error? So far 
as she rules, all must be right, or nothing is. 
She must be euduringly, incorruptibly good ; 
instinctively, infallibly wise — wise, not for self- 
development, but for self-renunciation : wise. 



166 Sesame anfc 3Ulfes 

not that she may set herself above her husband, 
but that she may never fail from his side : wise, 
not with the narrowness of insolent and loveless 
pride, but with the passionate gentleness of an 
infinitely variable, because infinitely applica- 
ble, modesty of service — the true changefulness 
of woman. In that great sense — La donna I 
mobile ', not Qual pMm y al vento ; no, nor yet 
"Variable as the shade, by the light quiver- 
ing aspen made" ; but variable as the light t 
manifold in fair and serene division, that it may 
take the color of all that it falls upon, and 
exalt it 

70. //. — I have been trying, thus far, to show 
you what should be the place, and what the 
power of woman. Now, secondly, we ask, 
What kind of education is to fit her for these ? 

And if you indeed think this a true conception 
of her office and dignity, it will not be difficult 
to trace the course of education which would fit 
her for the one, and raise her to the other. 

The first of our duties to her — no thoughtful 
persons now doubt this — is to secure for her 
such physical training and exercise as may con* 



©f Queens' (Sarfcens 167 

firm her health, and perfect her beauty, the 
highest refinement of that beauty being unat- 
tainable without splendor of activity and of 
delicate strength. To perfect her beauty, I say, 
and increase its power ; it cannot be too power- 
ful, nor shed its sacred light too far : onlj 
remember that all physical freedom is vain to 
produce beauty without a corresponding free- 
dom of heart. There are two passages of that 
poet who is distinguished, it seems to me, from 
all others — not by power, but by exquisite 
rtg/i tness, — which point you to the source, and 
describe to you, in a few syllables, the comple- 
tion, of womanly beauty. I w r ill read the intro- 
ductory stanzas, but the last is the one I wish 
you specially to notice : 



Three years she grew in sun and shower, 
Then Nature said : " A lovelier flower 

On earth was never sown. 
This child I to myself will take ; 
She shall be mine, and I will make 

A lady of my own. 

41 Myself will to my darling be 
Both law and impulse ; and with me 
The girl, in rock and plain, 



168 Sesame anfc Xllies 

In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, 
Shall feel an overseeing power 
To kindle, or restrain. 



** The floating clouds their state shall lend 
To her ; for her the willow bend ; 

Nor shall she fail to see 
Even in the motions of the storm 
Grace that shall mould the maiden's form 

By silent sympathy. 

" And vital feelings of delight 

Shall rear her form to stately height, 

Her virgin bosom swell. 
Such thoughts to Lucy I will give, 
While she and I together live, 

Here in this happy dell." * 



" Vital feelings of delight," observe. There 
are deadly feelings of delight ; but the natural 
ones are vital, necessary to very life. 

And they must be feelings of delight, if they 
are to be vital. Do not think you can make a 
girl lovely, if you do not make her happy* 
There is not one restraint you put on a good 
girl's nature — there is not one check you give 

* Observe, it is " Nature "who is speaking throughout, 
and who says, 

** While she and I together live." 



©f (Queens' ©arfcens 169 

to her instincts of affection or of effort — which 
will not be indelibly written on her features, 
with a hardness which is all the more painful 
because it takes away the brightness from the 
eyes of innocence, and the charm from the 
brow of virtue. 

71. This for the means : now note the end. 
Take from the same poet, in two lines, a per- 
fect description of womanly beauty — 

" A countenance in which did meet 
Sweet records, promises as sweet." 

The perfect loveliness of a woman's counte- 
nance can only consist in that majestic peace, 
which is founded in the memory of happy and 
useful years, — full of sweet records ; and from 
the joining of this with that yet more majestic 
childishness, which is still full of change and 
promise; — opening always — modest at once, 
and bright, with hope of better things to be 
won, and to be bestowed. There is no old age 
where there is still that promise. 

72. Thus, then, you have first to mould her 
physical frame, and then, as the strength she 



170 Sesame anD Xilfes 

gains will permit you, to fill and temper her 
mind with all knowledge and thoughts which 
tend to confirm its natural instincts of justice, 
and refine its natural tact of love. 

All such knowledge should be given her as 
may enable her to understand, and even to aid, 
the work of men : and yet it should be given, 
not as knowledge, — not as if it were, or could 
be, for her an object to know ; but only to feel, 
and to judge. It is of no moment, as a matter 
of pride or perfectness in herself, whether she 
knows many languages or one ; but it is of the 
utmost, that she should be able to show kind- 
ness to a stranger, and to understand the sweet- 
ness of a stranger's tongue. It is of no moment 
to her own worth or dignity that she should be 
acquainted with this science or that ; but it is 
of the highest that she should be trained in 
habits of accurate thought ; that she should 
understand the meaning, the inevitableness, 
and the loveliness of natural laws ; and follow 
at least some one path of scientific attainment, 
as far as to the threshold of that bitter Valley 
of Humiliation, into which only the wisest and 



Of (Queens' (Barrens 171 

bravest of men can descend, owning themselves 
forever children, gathering pebbles on a bound- 
less shore. It is of little consequence how 
many positions of cities she knows, or how 
many dates of events, or names of celebrated 
persons — it is not the object of education to 
turn a woman into a dictionary ; but it is 
deeply necessary that she should be taught to 
enter with her whole personality into the his- 
tory she reads ; to picture the passages of it 
vitally in her own bright imagination ; to ap- 
prehend, with her fine instincts, the pathetic cir- 
cumstances and dramatic relations, which thf 
historian too often only eclipses by his reason 
ing, and disconnects by his arrangement ; it is 
for her to trace the hidden equities of divine 
reward, and catch sight, through the darkness, 
of the fateful threads of woven fire that connect 
error with its retribution. But, chiefly of all, 
she is to be taught to extend the limits of her 
sympathy with respect to that history which is 
being for her determined as the moments pass 
in which she draws her peaceful breath ; and 
to the contemporary calamity, which, were it 



172 Sesame and ILilies 

but rightly mourned by her, would recur no 
more hereafter. She is to exercise herself in 
imagining what would be the effects upon her 
mind and conduct, if she were daily brought 
into the presence of the suffering which is not 
the less real because shut from her sight. She 
is to be taught somewhat to understand the 
nothingness of the proportion which that little 
world in which she lives and loves, bears to the 
world in which God lives and loves; — and 
solemnly she is to be taught to strive that her 
thoughts of piety may not be feeble in propor- 
tion to the number they embrace, nor her 
prayer more languid that it is for the momen- 
tary relief from pain of her husband or her child, 
when it is uttered for the multitudes of those 
who have none to love them, — and is, " for all 
who are desolate and oppressed." 

73. Thus far, I think, I have had your concur- 
rence ; perhaps you will not be with me in what I 
believe is most needful for me to say. There is 
one dangerous science for women — one which 
they must indeed beware how they profanely 
touch— that of theology. Strange, and misera- 



Of (Queens' (Bar&ens 173 

bly strange, that while they are modest enough 
to doubt their powers, and pause at the thresh- 
old of sciences where every step is demon- 
strable and sure, they will plunge headlong, 
and without one thought of incompetency, 
into that science in which the greatest men 
have trembled, and the wisest erred. Strange, 
that they will complacently and pridefully bind 
up whatever vice or folly there is in them, 
whatever arrogance, petulance, or blind in com- 
prehensiveness, into one bitter bundle of con- 
secrated myrrh. Strange, in creatures born to 
be Love visible, that where they can know 
least they will condemn first, and think to 
recommend themselves to their Master by 
scrambling up the steps of His judgment- 
throne, to divide it with Him. Strangest of 
all, that they should think they were led by 
the Spirit of the Comforter into habits of mind 
which have become in them the unmixed ele- 
ments of home discomfort ; and that they dare 
to turn the Household Gods of Christianity 
into ugly idols of their own ; — spiritual dolls, 
for them to dress according to their caprice ; 



i74 Sesame anD Xitles 

and from which their husbands must turn 
away in grieved contempt, lest they should be 
shrieked at for breaking them. 

74. I believe, then, with this exception, that 
a girl's education should be nearly, in its 
course and material of study, the same as a 
boy's ; but quite differently directed. A woman, 
in any rank of life, ought to know whatever 
her husband is likely to know, but to know it 
in a different way. His command of it should 
be foundational and progressive ; hers, general 
and accomplished for daily and helpful use. 
Not but that it would often be wiser in men to 
learn things in a womanly sort of way, for 
present use, and to seek for the discipline 
and training of their mental powers in such 
branches of study as will be afterwards fittest 
for social service ; but, speaking broadly, a man 
ought to know any language or science he 
learns, thoroughly — while a woman ought to 
know the same language, or science, only so 
far as may enable her to sympathize in Ler 
husband's pleasures, and in those of his best 
friends. 



OX dueene' <3arDens 175 

75. Yet, observe, with exquisite accuracy as 
far ac she reaches. There is a wide difference 
between elementary knowledge and superficial 
knowledge — between a firm beginning and an 
infirm attempt at compassing. A woman may 
always help her husband by what she knows, 
however little ; by what she half knows, or 
misknows, she will only tease him. 

And indeed, if there were to be any difference 
between a girl's education and a boy's, I should 
say that of the two the girl should be earlier 
led, as her intellect ripens faster, into deep and 
serious subjects ; and that her range of litera- 
ture should be not more, but less, frivolous, 
calculated to add the qualities of patience and 
seriousness to her natural poignancy of thought 
and quickness of wit ; and also to keep her in 
a lofty and pure element of thought. I enter 
not now into any question of choice of books ; 
only let us be sure that her books are not 
heaped up in her lap as they fall out of the 
package of the circulating library, wet with the 
last and lightest spray of the fountain of 
folly. 



i76 Sesame and Xtlies 

76. Or even of the fountain of wit ; for with 
respect to that sore temptation of novel-read- 
ing, it is not the badness of a novel that we 
should dread, so much as its over-wrought in- 
terest. The weakest romance is not so stupefy- 
ing as the lower forms of religious exciting 
literature, and the worst romance is not so 
corrupting as false history, false philosophy, 
or false political essays. But the best romance 
becomes dangerous, if, by its excitement, it 
renders the ordinary course of life uninterest- 
ing, and increases the morbid thirst for useless 
acquaintance with scenes in which we shall 
never be called upon to act. 

77. I speak, therefore, of good novels only ; 
and our modern literature is particularly rich 
in types of such. Well read, indeed, these 
books have serious use, being nothing less than 
treatises on moral anatomy and chemistry ; 
studies of human nature in the elements of it. 
But I attach little weight to this function ; they 
are hardly ever read with earnestness enough 
to permit them to fulfil it. The utmost they 
usually do is to enlarge somewhat the charity 



Of Queens' (Barrens 177 

of a kind reader, or the bitterness of a malicious 
one ; for each will gather, from the novel, food 
for her own disposition. Those who are natu- 
rally proud and envious will learn from Thack- 
eray to despise humanity ; those who are 
naturally gentle, to pity it ; those who are 
naturally shallow, to laugh at it. So, also, 
there might be a serviceable power in novels 
to bring before us, in vividness, a human truth 
which we had before dimly conceived ; but the 
temptation to picturesqueness of statement is 
so great, that often the best writers of fiction 
cannot resist it ; and our views are rendered 
so violent and one-sided, that their vitality is 
rather a harm than good. 

78. Without, however, venturing here on any 
attempt at decision how much novel-reading 
should be allowed, let me at least clearly assert 
this, that whether novels, or poetry, or history 
be read, they should be chosen, not for their 
freedom from evil, but for their possession of 
good. The chance and scattered evil that maj 
here and there haunt, or hide itself in, a power- 
ful book, never does any harm to a noble girl; 



178 Sesame anfc Xilies 

but the emptiness of an author oppresses her, 
and his amiable folly degrades her. And if she 
can have access to a good library of old and 
classical books, there need be no choosing at 
all. Keep the modern magazine and novel out 
of your girl's way : turn her loose into the old 
library every wet day, and let her alone. She 
will find what is good for her ; you cannot : for 
there is just this difference between the making 
of a girl's character and a boy's — you may chisel 
a boy into shape, as you would a rock, or ham- 
mer him into it, if he be of a better kind, as you 
would a piece of bronze. But you cannot ham- 
mer a girl into any thing. She grows as a flower 
does, — she will wither without sun ; she will 
decay in her sheath, as the narcissus will, if 
you do not give her air enough ; she may fall, 
and defile her head in dust, if you leave her 
without help at some moments of her life ; but 
you cannot fetter her ; she must take her own 
fair form and way, if she take any, and in mind 
as in body, must have always 

" Her household motions light and free 
And steps of virgin liberty." 



OX Queens' (SarDens 179 

Ivet her loose in the library, I say, as you do a 
fawn in a field. It knows the bad weeds 
twenty times better than you ; and the good 
ones too, and will eat some bitter and prickly 
ones, good for it, which you had not the slight- 
est thought would have been so. 

79. Then, in art, keep the finest models 
before her, and let her practice in all accom- 
plishments be accurate and thorough, so as to 
enable her to understand more than she accom- 
plishes. I say the finest models — that is to say, 
the truest, simplest, usefullest. Note those 
epithets ; they will range through all the arts. 
Try them in music, where you might think 
them the least applicable. I say the truest, 
that in which the notes most closely and faith- 
fully express the meaning of the words, or the 
character of intended emotion ; again, the 
simplest, that in which the meaning and mel- 
ody are attained with the fewest and most 
significant notes possible ; and, finally, the 
usefullest, that music which makes the best 
words most beautiful, which enchants them in 
our memories each with its own glory of sound, 



\So Sesame anfc Xilies 

and which applies them closest to the heart at 
the moment we need them. 

80. And not only in the material and in the 
course, but yet more earnestly in the spirit of 
it, let a girl's education be as serious as a boy's. 
You bring up your girls as if they were meant 
for sideboard ornament, and then complain of 
their frivolity. Give them the same advantages 
that you give their brothers — appeal to the 
same grand instincts of virtue in them ; teach 
them, also, that courage and truth are the 
pillars of their being : — do you think that they 
would not answer that appeal, brave and true 
as they are even now, when you know that 
there is hardly a girl's school in this Christian 
kingdom where the children's courage or sin- 
cerity would be thought of half so much 
importance as their way of coming in at a 
door; and when the whole system of society , 
as respects the mode of establishing them in 
life, is one rotten plague of cowardice and im- 
posture—cowardice, in not daring to let them 
live, or love, except as their neighbors choose ; 
and imposture, in bringing, for the purpose of 



Qt (SUieens' (BarDens 181 

our own pride, the full glow of the world's 
worst vanity upon a girl's eyes, at the very 
period when the whole happiness of her future 
existence depends upon her remaining un- 
dazzled ? 

81. And give them, lastly, not only noble 
teachings, but noble teachers. You consider 
somewhat, before you send your boy to school, 
what kind of a man the master is ; — whatsoever 
kind of a man he is, you at least give him full 
authority over your son, and show some respect 
for him yourself; — if he comes to dine with you, 
you do not put him at a side-table : you know 
also that, at his college, your child's immediate 
tutor will be under the direction of some still 
higher tutor, for whom you have absolute 
reverence. You do not treat the Dean of 
Christ Church or the Master of Trinity as your 
inferiors. 

But what teachers do you give your girls, 
and what reverence do you show to the teachers 
you have chosen ? Is a girl likely to think her 
own conduct, or her own intellect, of much 
importance, when you trust the entire formation 



182 Sesame anO XUtes 

of her character, moral and intellectual, to a 
person whom you let your servants treat with 
less respect than they do your housekeeper (as 
if the soul of your child were a less charge than 
jams and groceries), and whom you yourself 
think you confer an honor upon by letting hei 
sometimes sit in the drawing-room in the 
evening ? 

82. Thus, then, of literature as her help, and 
thus of art. There is one more help which we 
cannot do without — one which, alone, hag 
sometimes done more than all other influences 
besides, — the help of wild and fair nature. 
Hear this of the education of Joan of Arc : 

" The education of this poor girl was mean 
according to the present standard ; was ineffa- 
bly grand, according to a purer philosophic 
standard ; and only not good for our age, be- 
cause for us it would be unattainable. 

***** 

" Next after her spiritual advantages, she 
owed most to the advantages of her situation. 
The fountain of Domremy was on the blink of 
a boundless forest ; and it was haunted to that 



Ot (Slueens' Gardens 183 

degree by fairies, that the parish priest {curi) 
was obliged to read mass there once a year, in 
order to keep them in any decent bounds. 
* * * * * 

u But the forests of Domr^my — those were the 
glories of the land ; for in them abode mysteri- 
ous powers and ancient secrets that towered 
into tragic strength. ' Abbeys there were, and 
abbey windows,' — ' like Moorish temples of the 
Hindoos,' that exercised even princely power 
both in Touraine and in the German Diets. 
These had their sweet bells that pierced the 
forests for many a league at matins or vespers, 
and each its own dreamy legend. Few enough, 
and scattered enough, were these abbeys, so as 
in no degree to disturb the deep solitude of the 
region ; yet many enough to spread a network 
or awning of Christian sanctity over what else 
might have seemed a heathen wilderness.*'* 

Now, you cannot, indeed, have here in Eng- 
land, woods eighteen miles deep to the centre ; 
but you can, perhaps, keep a fairy or two for 
your children yet, if you wish to keep them. 

* " Joan of Arc : in Reference to M. Michelet's History 
of France." De Quincey's Works, vol. iii., p. 217. 



1 84 Sesame anfc Xilfes 

But do you wish it ? Suppose you had each, at 
the back of your houses, a garden large enough 
for your children to play in, with just as much 
lawn as would give them room to run, — no 
more — and that you could not change your 
abode ; but that, if you chose, you could double 
your income, or quadruple it, by digging a coal 
shaft in the middle of the lawn, and turning the 
flower-beds into heaps of coke. Would you do 
it ? I hope not. I can tell you, you would be 
wrong if you did, though it gave you income 
sixty-fold instead of fourfold. 

83. Yet this is what you are doing with all 
England. The whole country is but a little 
garden, not more than enough for your children 
to run on the lawns of, if you would let them 
all run there. And this little garden you will 
turn into furnace-ground, and fill with heaps of 
cinders, if you can ; and those children of yours> 
not you, will suffer for it. For the fairies will 
not be all banished ; there are fairies of the 
furnace as of the wood, and their first gifts seem 
to be " sharp arrows of the mighty " ; but their 
last gifts are " coals of juniper." 



®t Queens' (Barrens 185 

84. And yet I cannot — though there is no 
part of my subject that I feel more — press this 
upon you ; for we made so little use of the 
power of nature while we had it that we shall 
hardly feel what we have lost. Just on the 
other side of the Mersey you have your Snow- 
don, and your Menai Straits, and that mighty 
granite rock beyond the moors of Auglesea, 
splendid in-its heatherly crest, and foot planted 
in the deep sea, once thought of as sacred — 
a divine promontory, looking westward ; the 
Holy Head or Headland, still not without awe 
when its red light glares first through storm. 
These are the hills, and these the bays and blue 
inlets, which, among the Greeks, would have 
been always loved, always fateful in influence 
on the national mind. That Snowdon is your 
Parnassus ; but where are its Muses ? Thaf 
Holyhead mountain is your Island of ^Sginq 
but where is its Temple to Minerva ? 

85. Shall I read you what the Christian Mi 
nerva had achieved under the shadow of oui 
Parnassus, up to the year 1848 ? Here is a little 
account of a Welsh school, from page 261 of the 



irfo Sesame ano xiuea 

report on Wales, published by the Committee 
of Council on Education. This is a school close 
to a town containing 5,000 persons : 

" I then called up a larger class, most of 
whom had recently come to the school. Three 
girls repeatedly declared they had never heard 
of Christ, and two that they had never heard of 
God. Two out of six thought Christ was on 
earth now ('they might have had a worse 
thought, perhaps ') ; three knew nothing about 
the crucifixion. Four out of seven did not 
know the names of the months, nor the number 
of days in a year. They had no notion of addi- 
tion beyond two and two, or three and three ; 
their minds were perfect blanks." 

Oh, ye women of England ! from the Prin- 
cess of that Wales to the simplest of you, do not 
think your own children can be brought into 
their true fold of rest while these are scattered 
on the hills, as sheep having no shepherd. 
And do not think your daughters can be trained 
to the truth of their own human beauty, while; 
the pleasant places, which God made at once 
for their school-room and their play-ground, lie 



©f Queens' GarDens 187 

desolate and defiled. You cannot baptize them 
rightly in those inch-deep fonts of yours, 
unless you baptize them also in the sweet 
waters which the great Lawgiver strikes forth 
for ever from the rocks of your native land- 
waters which a Pagan would have worshipped 
in their purity, and you only worship with 
pollution. You cannot lead your children 
faithfully to those narrow axe-hewn church 
altars of yours, while the dark azure altars in 
heaven — the mountains that sustain your island 
throne — mountains on which a Pagan would 
have seen the powers of heaven rest in every 
wreathed cloud — remain for you without in- 
scription ; altars built, not to, but by, an 
Unknown God. 

86. ///.—Thus far, then, of the nature, thus 
far of the teaching, of woman, and thus of her 
household office, and queenliness. We come 
now to our last, our widest question : What 
is her queenly office with respect to the 
state ? 

Generally we are under an impression that a 
man's duties are public, and a woman's private. 



^38 Sesame anfc Xtltes 

But this is not altogether so. A man has a 
personal work or duty, relating to his own 
home, and a public work or duty, which is the 
expansion of the other, relating to the state 
So a woman has a personal work and duty, 
relating to her own home, and a public work 
and duty, which is also the expansion of that. 

Now the man's work fcr his own home is, as 
has been said, to secure its maintenance, prog- 
ress, a i defence ; the woman's to secure its 
order, comfort, and loveliness. 

Expand both these functions. The man's 
duty, as a member of a commonwealth, is to 
assist in the maintenance, in the advance, in 
the defence, of the state. The woman's duty, 
as a member of the commonwealth, is to assist 
m the ordering, in the comforting, and in the 
beautiful adornment of the state. 

What the man is at his own gate, defending 
it, if need be, against insult and spoil, that also, 
not in a less, but in a more devoted, measure, 
he is to be at the gate of his country, leaving 
his home, if need be, even to the spoiler, to do 
his more incumbent work there. 



Of (Slueene* (Barfcens 189 

And, in like manner, what the woman is to 
be within her gates, as the centre of order, the 
balm of distress, and the mirror of beauty ; that 
she is also to be without her gates, where order 
is more difficult, distress more imminent, love- 
liness more rare. 

And as within the human heart there is al- 
ways set an instinct for all its real duties, — an 
instinct which you cannot quench, but only 
warp and corrupt if you withdraw it from its 
true purpose ; — as there is the intense instinct 
of love, which, rightly disciplined, maintains 
all the sanctities of life and, misdirected, under- 
mines them ; and must do either the one or the 
other ; — so there is in the human heart an inex- 
tinguishable instinct, the love of power, which, 
rightly directed, maintains all the majesty of 
law and life, and, misdirected, wrecks them. 

87. Deep rooted in the innermost life of the 
heart of man, and of the heart of woman, God 
set it there, and God keeps it there. Vainly, 
as falsely, you blame or rebuke the desire of 
power! For Heaven's sake, and for Man's 
sake, desire it all you can. But what power? 



igo Sesame anfc Xtlies 

That is all the question, Power to destroy ? the 
lion's limb, and the dragon's breath ? Not so. 
Power to heal, to redeem, to guide, and to 
guard. Power of the sceptre and shield ; the 
power of the royal hand that heals in touching, 
— that binds the fiend and looses the captive ; 
the throne that is fomnded on the rock of Jus- 
tice, and descended from only by steps of mercy. 
Will you not covet such power as this, and seek 
such throne as this, and be no more house- 
wives, but queens ? 

88. It is now long since the women of Eng- 
land arrogated, universally, a title which once 
belonged to nobility only, and, having once 
been in the habit of accepting the simple title 
of gentlewoman, as correspondent to that of 
gentleman, insisted on the privilege of assum- 
ing the title of " Lady," * which properly 
corresponds only to the title of " L,ord." 

* I wish there were a true order of chivalry instituted 
for our English youth of certain ranks, in which both 
boy and girl should receive, at a given age, their knight- 
hood and ladyhood by true title ; attainable only by 
certain probation and trial both of character and accom- 
plishment ; and to be forfeited, on conviction, by their 
peers, of any dishonorable act. Such an institution 
would be entirely, and with all noble results, possible, in 
a nation which loved honor. That it would not be pos- 
sible among us is not to the discredit of the scheme. 



©f Queens' (Sar&ens 191 

I do not blame them for this ; but only for 
their narrow motive in this. I would have 
them desire and claim the title of Lady, pro- 
vided the)' claim, not merely the title, but the 
office and duty signified by it. Lady means 
" bread-giver " or <( loaf-giver," and Lord means 
"maintainer of laws," and both titles have ref- 
erence, not to the law which is maintained in 
the house, nor to the bread which is given 
to the household ; but to law maintained for 
the multitude, and to bread broken among the 
multitude. So that a Lord has legal claim only 
to his title in so far as he is the maintainer of 
the justice of the Lord of Lords ; and a Lady 
has legal claim to her title, only so far as she 
communicates that help to the poor representa- 
tives of her Master, which women once, minis- 
tering to Him of their substance, were permitted 
to extend to that Master Himself; and when 
she is known, as He Himself once was, in 
breaking of bread. 

89. And this beneficent and legal dominion, 
this power of the Dominus, or House Lord, 
and of the Domina, or House-Lady, is great 



192 Sesame anfc Xilice 

and venerable, not in the number of those 
through whom it has lineally descended, but in 
the number of those whom it grasps within its 
sway ; it is always regarded with reverent wor 
ship wherever its dynasty is founded on its duty, 
and its ambition correlative with its benefi- 
cence. Your fancy is pleased with the thought 
of being noble ladies, with a train of vassals. Be 
it so : you cannot be too noble, and your train 
cannot be too great ; but see to it that your train 
is of vassals whom you serve and feed, not merely 
of slaves who serve and feed you ; and that the 
multitude which obeys you is of those whom 
you have comforted, not oppressed, — whom 
you have redeemed, not led into captivity. 

90. And this, which is true of the lower or 
household dominion, is equally true of the 
queenly dominion ; — that highest dignity is 
open to you, if you will also accept that highest 
duty. Rex et Regina — Roi et Reine — ' ' Right- 
doers" ; they differ but from the Lady and 
Lord, in that their power is supreme over the 
mind as over the person — that they not only 
feed and clothe, but direct and teach. And 



®t Queens' (Barrens 193 

whether consciously or not, you must be, in 
many a heart, enthroned : there is no putting 
by that crown ; queens you must always be ; 
queens to your lovers ; queens to your hus- 
bands and your sons; queens of higher mys- 
tery to the world beyond, which bows itself, 
and will for ever bow, before the myrtle crown, 
and the stainless sceptre, of womanhood. But, 
alas ! you are too often idle and careless queens, 
grasping at majesty in the least things, while 
you abdicate it in the greatest ; and leaving 
misrule and violence to work their will among 
men, in defiance of the power, which, holding 
straight in gift from the Prince of all Peace, 
the wicked among you betray, and the good 
forget. 

91. " Prince of Peace." Note that name. 
When kings rule in that name, and nobles, and 
the judges of the earth, they also, in their nar- 
row place, and mortal measure, receive the 
power of it. There are no other rulers than 
they; other rule than theirs is but misrule; 
they who govern verily Dei gratid are all 
princes, yes, or princesses, of peace. There 
7 



194 Sesame an£> Xilies 

is not a war in the world, no, nor an injus- 
tice, but you women are answerable for it ; 
not in that you have provoked, but in that 
you have not hindered. Men, by their na- 
ture, are prone to fight ; they will fight for 
any cause, or for none. It is for you to choose 
their cause for them, and forbid them when 
there is no cause. There is no suffering, no 
injustice, no misery in the earth, but the guilt 
of it lies with you. Men can bear the sight of 
it, but you should not be able to bear it. Men 
may tread it down without sympathy in their 
own struggle ; but men are feeble in sympathy, 
and contracted in hope ; it is you only who can 
feel the depths of pain ; and conceive the way 
of its healing. Instead of trying to do this, 
you turn away from it ; you shut yourselves 
within your park walls and garden gates ; and 
you are content to know that there is beyond 
them a whole world in wilderness — a world of 
secrets which you dare not penetrate, and of 
suffering which you dare not conceive. 

92. I tell you that this is to me quite the 
most amazing among the phenomena of hu- 



©t Queens' <5arDens 195 

manity. I am surprised at no depths to which, 
when once warped from its honor, that human- 
ity can be degraded. I do not wonder at the 
miser's death, with his hands, as they relax, 
dropping gold. I do not wonder at the sensual- 
ist's life, with the shroud wrapped about his 
feet. I do not wonder at the single-handed 
murder of a single victim, done by the assassin 
in the darkness of the railway, or reed-shadow 
of the marsh. I do not even wonder at the 
myriad-handed murder of multitudes, done 
boastfully in the daylight, by the frenzy of 
nations, and the immeasurable, unimaginable 
guilt, heaped up from hell to heaven, of their 
priests, and kings. But this is wonderful to 
me — oh, how wonderful ! — to see the tender 
and delicate woman among you, with her child 
at her breast, and a power, if she would wield 
it, over it, and over its father, purer than the 
air of heaven, and stronger than the seas of 
earth— nay, a magnitude of blessing which hei 
husband would not part with for all that earth 
itself, though it were made of one entire and 
perfect chrysolite: — to see her abdicate this 



iq6 Sesame anD Xilfes 

majesty to play at precedence with her next 
door neighbor ! This is wonderful — oh, won- 
derful ! — to see her, with every innocent feel 
ing fresh within her, go out in the morning into 
her garden to play with the fringes of its 
guarded flowers, and lift their heads when they 
are drooping, with her happy smile upon her 
face, and no cloud upon her brow, because 
there is a little wall around her place of peace ; 
and yet she knows, in her heart, if she would 
only look for its knowledge, that, outside of 
that little rose-covered wall, the wild grass, to 
the horizon, is torn up by the agony of men, 
and beat level by the drift of their life-blood. 

93. Have you ever considered what a deep 
under meaning there lies, or at least may be 
read, if we choose, in our custom of strewing 
flowers before those whom we think most 
happy ? Do you suppose it is merely to deceive 
them into the hope that happiness is always to 
fall thus in showers at their feet ? — that wher- 
ever they pass they will tread on herbs of sweet 
scent, and that the rough ground will be made 
smooth for them by depth of roses ? So surely 



Qf Queens' OarDens 197 

as they believe that, they will have, instead, to 
walk on bitter herbs and thorns, and the only 
softness to their feet will be of snow. But it is 
not thus intended they should believe ; there is 
a better meaning in that old custom. The path 
of a good woman is indeed strewn with flowers : 
but they rise behind her steps, not before them. 
" Her feet have touched the meadows, and left 
the daisies rosy." 

94. You think that only a lover's fancy, — false 
and vain ! How if it could be true ? You think 
this also, perhaps, only a poet's fancy : 

" Even the light harebell raised its head 
Elastic from her airy tread. ' ' 

But it is little to say of a woman that she only 
does not destroy where she passes. She should 
revive ; the hare-bells should bloom, not stoop, 
as she passes. You think I am rushing into 
wild hyperbole ? Pardon me, not a whit— I 
mean what I say in calm English, spoken in 
resolute truth. You have heard it said — (and I 
believe there is more than fancy even in that 
saying, but let it pass for a fanciful one) — that 



198 Sesame anfc Xities 

Sowers only flourish rightly in the garden of 
some one who loves them. I know you would 
like that to be true ; you would think it a 
pleasant magic if you could flush your flowers 
into brighter bloom by a kind look upon them : 
nay, more, if your look had the power, not only 
to cheer, but to guard them ; — if you could bid 
the black blight turn away, and the knotted 
caterpillar spare — if you could bid the dew fall 
upon them in the drought, and say to the south 
wind, in frost : " Come, thou south, and breathe 
upon my garden, that the spices of it may flow 
out." This you would think a great thing? 
And do you think it not a greater thing that all 
this (and how much more than this !) you can 
do for fairer flowers than these — flowers that 
could bless you for having blessed them, and 
will love you for having loved them ; — flowers 
that have thoughts like yours, and lives like 
yours, which, once saved, you save forever ? Is 
this only a little power ? Far among the moor- 
lands and the rocks, — far in the darkness of the 
terrible streets, — these feeble florets are lying, 
with all their fresh leaves torn, and their stems 



Of daccne* <3arDens 199 

broken — will you never go down to them, nor 
set them in order in their little fragrant beds, 
nor fence them in their trembling from the 
fierce wind? Shall morning follow morning, 
for you, but not for them ; and the dawn rise 
to watch, far away, those frantic Dances of 
Death * ; but no dawn rise to breathe upon 
these living banks of wild violet, and woodbine, 
and rose ; nor call to you, through your case- 
ment, — call (not giving you the name of the 
English poet's lady, but the name of Dante's 
great Matilda, who, on the edge of happy Lethe, 
stood, wreathing flowers with flowers), saying : 

" Come into the garden, Maud, 
For the black bat, night, has flown, 
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad, 
And the musk of the roses blown ' ' ? 

Will you not go down among them ? — among 
those sweet living things, whose new courage, 
sprung from the earth with the deep color of 
heaven upon it, is starting up in strength of 
goodly spire, and whose purity, washed from 
the dust, is opening, bud by bud, into the 

* See note, p. 112. 



2oo Sesame anfc Xtlfes 

flower of promise ; — and still they turn to you, 
and for you : " The Larkspur listens — I hear, I 
hear! And the Lily whispers — I wait." 

95. Did you notice that i missed two lines 
when I read you that first stanza, and think that 
I had forgotten them ? Hear them now : 

" Come into the garden, Maud, 
For the black bat, night, has flown ; 
Come into the garden, Maud, 
I am here at the gate, alone." 

Who is it, think you, who stands at the gate 
of this sweeter garden, alone, waiting for you? 
Did you ever hear, not of a Maude, but a Made- 
leine, who went down to her garden in the 
dawn, and found one waiting at the gate, whom 
she supposed to be the gardener? Have you 
not sought Him often ; — sought Him in vain, all 
through the night ; — sought Him in vain at the 
gate of that old garden where the fiery sword 
is set ? He is never there ; but at the gate of 
this garden He is waiting always — waiting to 
take your hand — ready to go down to see the 
fruits of the valley, to see whether the vine has 
flourished, and the pomegranate budded. There 



©f C&ueens' (Barrens 201 

you shall see with Him the little tendrils of the 
vines that His hand is guiding ; there you shall 
see the pomegranate springing where His hand 
cast the sanguine seed ; — more : you shall see 
the troops of the angel keepers, that, with their 
wings, wave away the hungry birds from the 
pathsides where He has sown, and call to each 
other between the vineyard rows: "Take us 
the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines, 
for our vines have tender grapes." Oh — you 
queens — you queens ; among the hills and hap- 
py greenwood of this land of yours, shall the 
foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have 
nests ; and, in your cities, shall the stones cry 
out against you, that they are the only pillows 
where the Son of Man can lay His head ? 




LECTURE III. 

THE MYSTERY OF WFE AND ITS ARTS. 

Lecture delivered in the theatre of the Royal College of 
Science, Dublin, 1868. 



96. When I accepted the privilege of address- 
ing you to-day, I was not aware of a restriction 
with respect to the topics of discussion which 
may be brought before this Society,* — a restric- 
tion which, though entirely wise and right 
under the circumstances contemplated in its 
introduction, would necessarily have disabled 
me, thinking as I think, from preparing any 
lecture for you on the subject of art in a form 
which might be permanently useful. Pardon 
me, therefore, in so far as I must transgress 
such limitation ; for indeed my infringement 
will be of the letter — not of the spirit — of your 

* That no reference should be made to religious ques- 
tions. 

joa 



Gbe /Iftgsters of Xtfe ano tits Brts 203 

commands. In whatever I may say touching 
the religion which has been the foundation of 
art, or the policy which has contributed to its 
power, if I offend one, I shall offend all ; for I 
shall take no note of any separations in creeds, 
or antagonisms in parties : neither do I fear 
that ultimately I shall offend any, by proving — 
or at least stating as capable of positive proof — 
the connection of all that is best in the crafts 
and arts of man, with the simplicity of his 
faith, and the sincerity of his patriotism. 

97. But I speak to you under another disad- 
vantage, by which I am checked in frankness 
of utterance, not here only, but everywhere— 
namely, that I am never fully aware how far 
my audiences are disposed to give me credit for 
real knowledge of my subject, or how far they 
grant me attention only because I have been 
sometimes thought an ingenious or pleasant 
essayist upon it. For I have had what, in many 
respects, I boldly call the misfortune, to set my 
words sometimes prettily together ; not without 
a foolish vanity in the poor knack that I had 
of doing so ; until I was heavily punished for 



204 Sesame anD Xtltes 

this pride, by finding that many people thought 
of the words only, and cared nothing for their 
meaning. Happily, therefore, the power of 
using such pleasant language — if indeed it ever 
were mine — is passing away from me ; and 
whatever I am now able to say at all, I find 
myself forced to say with great plainness. For 
my thoughts have changed also, as my words 
have ; and whereas in earlier life, what little 
influence I obtained was due perhaps chiefly to 
the enthusiasm with which I was able to dwell 
on the beauty of the physical clouds, and of 
their colors in the sky ; so all the influence I 
now desire to retain must be due to the earnest- 
ness with which I am endeavoring to trace the 
form and beauty of another kind of cloud than 
those — the bright cloud, of which it is written : 

"What is your life? It is even as a vapor 
that appeareth for a little time, and then van- 
isheth away." 

98. I suppose few people reach the middle or 
latter period of their age, without having, at 
some moment of change or disappointment, 
felt the truth of those bitter words ; and been 



Cbe /Hasten? of %\fe anD ITts Brts 205 

startled by the fading of the sunshine from the 
cloud of their life, into the sudden agony of the 
knowledge that the fabric of it was as fragile as 
a dream, and the endurance of it as transient 
as the dew. But it is not always that, even at 
such times of melancholy surprise, we can enter 
into any true perception that this human life 
shares, in the nature of it, not only the evanes- 
cence, but the mystery of the cloud ; that its 
avenues are wreathed in darkness, and its forms 
and courses no less fantastic than spectral and 
obscure ; so that not only in the vanity which 
we cannot grasp, but in the shadow which we 
cannot pierce, it is true of this cloudy life of 
ours, that " man walketh in a vain shadow, and 
disquieteth himself in vain." 

99. And least of all, whatever may have been 
the eagerness of our passions, or the height of 
our pride, are we able to understand in its 
depth the third and most solemn character in 
which our life is like those clouds of heaven : 
that to it belongs not only their transience, 
not only their mystery, but also their power ; 
that in the cloud of the human soul there is a 



206 Sesame an& %iiies 

fire stronger than the lightning, and a grace 
more precious than the rain ; and that though 
of the good and evil it shall one day be said 
alike, that the place that knew them knows 
them no more, there is an infinite separation 
between those whose brief presence had there 
been a blessing, like the mist of Eden that went 
up from the earth to water the garden, and 
those whose place knew them only as a drifting 
and changeful shade, of whom the heavenly 
sentence is, that they are " wells without 
water ; clouds that are carried with a tempest, 
to whom the mist of darkness is reserved for 
ever ? ' ' 

too. To those among us, however, who have 
lived long enough to form some just estimate 
of the rate of the changes which are, hour by 
hour in accelerating catastrophe, manifesting 
themselves in the laws, the arts, and the creeds 
of men, it seems to me, that now at least, if 
never at any former time, the thoughts of the 
true nature of our life, and of its powers and 
responsibilities, should present themselves with 
absolute sadness and sternness. 



Gbe /Ifogsterg of Xife anD ITts Brts 207 

And although I know that this feeling is 
much deepened in my own mind by disap- 
pointment, which, by chance, has attended the 
greater number of my cherished purposes, I do 
not for that reason distrust the feeling itself, 
though I am on my guard against an exag- 
gerated degree of it : nay, I rather believe that 
in periods of new effort and violent change, 
disappointment is a wholesome medicine ; and 
that in the secret of it, as in the twilight so be- 
loved by Titian, we may see the colors of things 
with deeper truth than in the most dazzling 
sunshine. And because these truths about the 
works of men, which I want to bring to-day 
before you, are most of them sad ones, though 
at the same time helpful ; and because also I 
believe that your kind Irish hearts will answer 
more gladly to the truthful expression of a per- 
sonal feeling, than to the exposition of an ab- 
stract principle, I will permit myself so much 
unreserved speaking of my own causes of re- 
gret, as may enable you to make just allowance 
for what, according to your sympathies, you 
will call either the bitterness, or the insight, of 



2oS Sesame anO Xilies 

a mind which has surrendered its best hopes, 
and been foiled in its favorite aims. 

101. I spent the ten strongest years of my 
life (from twenty to thirty) in endeavoring to 
show the excellence of the work of the man 
whom I believed, and rightly believed, to be 
the greatest painter of the schools of England 
since Reynolds. I had then perfect faith in 
the power of every great truth or beauty to 
prevail ultimately, and take its right place in 
usefulness and honor ; and I strove to bring the 
painter's work into this due place, while the 
painter was yet alive. But he knew, better 
than I, the uselessness of talking about what 
people could not see for themselves. He al- 
ways discouraged me scornfully, even when 
he thanked me ; and he died before even the 
superficial effect of my work was visible. I 
went on, however, thinking I could at least be 
of use to the public, if not to him, in proving 
his power. My books got talked about a little. 
The prices of modern pictures generally rose, 
and I was beginning to take some pleasure in a 
sense of gradual victory, when, fortunately or 



Gbe /l&gsterg of Xite ano flts Brts 209 

unfortunately, an opportunity of perfect trial 
undeceived me at once, and forever. The 
Trustees of the National Gallery commissioned 
me to arrange the Turner drawings there, and 
permitted me to prepare three hundred ex- 
amples of his studies from nature, for exhibi- 
tion at Kensington. At Kensington they were, 
and are, placed for exhibition ; but they are not 
exhibited, for the room in which they hang is 
always empty. 

102. Well — this showed me at once that 
those ten years of my life had been, in their 
chief purpose, lost. For that I did not so much 
care ; I had at least learned my own business 
thoroughly, and should be able, as I fondly 
supposed, after such a lesson, now to use my 
knowledge to a better effect. But what I did 
care for was the — to me frightful — discovery 
that the most splendid genius in the arts might 
be permitted by Providence to labor and perish 
uselessly ; that in the very fineness of it there 
might be something rendering it invisible to 
ordinary eyes ; but that, with this strange ex- 
cellence, faults might be mingled which would 



210 Sesame an& Xllfes 

be as deadly as its virtues were vain ; that the 
glory of it was perishable, as well as invisible, 
and the gift and grace of it might be to us as 
snow in summer, and as rain in harvest. 

103. That was the first mystery of life to me. 
But, while my best energy was given to the 
study of painting, I had put collateral effort 
more prudent, if less enthusiastic, into that of 
architecture ; and in this I could not complain 
of meeting with no sympathy. Among several 
personal reasons which caused me to desire 
that I might give this, my closing lecture 
on the subject of art here, in Ireland, one of 
the chief was, that in reading it I should stand 
near the beautiful building — the engineers' 
school of your college, — which was the first 
realization I had the joy to see, of the prin- 
ciples I had, until then, been endeavoring to 
teach ; but which, alas, is now to me no more 
than the richly canopied monument of one of 
the most earnest souls that ever gave itself to 
the arts, and one of my truest and most loving 
friend. , Benjamin Woodward. Nor was it hert 
in Ireland only that I received the help of 



tTbe /Hasten? of Xife anD 1Tts Brts 211 

Irish sympathy and genius. When, to another 
friend, Sir Thomas Deane, with Mr. Woodward, 
was entrusted the building of the museum at 
Oxford, the best details of the work were exe- 
cuted by sculptors who had been born and 
trained here ; and the first window of the 
facade of the building, in which was inaugu- 
rated the study of natural science in England, 
in true fellowship with literature, was carved 
from my design by an Irish sculptor. 

104. You may perhaps think that no man 
ought to speak of disappointment, to whom, 
even in one branch of labor, so much success 
was granted. Had Mr. Woodward now been 
beside me, I had not so spoken ; but his gentle 
and passionate spirit was cut off from the fulfil- 
ment of its purposes, and the work we did 
together is now become vain. It may not be so 
in future ; but the architecture we endeavored 
to introduce is inconsistent alike with the reck- 
less luxury, the deforming mechanism, and the 
squalid misery of modern cities ; among the 
formative fashions of the day, aided, especially 
in England, by ecclesiastical sentiment, it in- 



2i# Sesame anfc Xilies 

deed obtained notoriety ; and sometimes behind 
an engine furnace, or a railroad bank, you may 
detect the pathetic discord of its momentary 
grace, and, with toil, decipher its floral carvings 
choked with soot. I felt answerable to the 
schools I loved, only for their injury. I per- 
ceived that this new portion of my strength 
had also been spent in vain ; and from amidst 
streets of iron, and palaces of crystal, shrank 
back at last to the carving of the mountain and 
color of the flower. 

105. And still I could tell of failure, and 
failure repeated as years went on ; but I have 
trespassed enough on your patience to show 
you, in part, the causes of my discouragement. 
Now let me more deliberately tell you its re- 
sults. You know there is a tendency in the 
minds of many men, when they are heavily 
disappointed in the main purposes of their life, 
to feel, and perhaps in warning, perhaps in 
mockery, to declare, that life itself is a vanity. 
Because it has disappointed them, they think 
its nature is of disappointment always, or, at 
best, of pleasure that can be grasped by imagi- 



Gbe /Ifcgsters ot Xife anD ITts Btts 213 

nation only ; that the cloud of it has no strength 
nor fire within, but is a painted cloud only, to 
be delighted in, yet despised. You know how 
beautifully Pope has expressed this particular 
phase of thought : 

" Meanwhile opinion gilds, with varying rays, 
These painted clouds that beautify our days ; 
Each want of happiness by hope supplied, 
And each vacuity of sense, by pride. 

" Hope builds as fast as Knowledge can destroy ; 
In Folly's cup, still laughs the bubble joy. 
One pleasure past, another still we gain, 
And not a vanity is given in vain." 

But the effect of failure upon my own mind has 
been just the reverse of this. The more that 
my life disappointed me, the more solemn and 
wonderful it became to me. It seemed, con- 
trarily to Pope's saying, that the vanity of it 
was indeed given in vain ; but that there was 
something behind the veil of it, which was not 
vanity. It became to me not a painted cloud, 
but a terrible and impenetrable one : not a 
mirage, which vanished as I drew near, but a 
pillar of darkness, to which I was forbidden to 
draw near. For I saw that both my own failure, 



214 Seeame anO %iiies 

and such success in petty things as in its poor 
triumph seemed to me worse than failure, came 
from the want of sufficiently earnest effort to 
understand the whole law and meaning of ex- 
istence, and to bring it to noble and due end ; 
as, on the other hand, I saw more and more 
clearly that all enduring success in the arts, or 
in any other occupation, had come from the 
ruling of lower purposes, not by a conviction 
of their nothingness, but by a solemn faith in 
the advancing power of human nature, or in the 
promise, however dimly apprehended, that the 
mortal part of it would one day be swallowed 
up in immortality ; and that, indeed, the arts 
themselves never had reached any vital strength 
or honor but in the effort to proclaim this im- 
mortality, and in the service either of great and 
just religion, or of some unselfish patriotism, 
and law of such national life as must be the 
foundation of religion. 

106. Nothing that I have ever said is more 
true or necessary — nothing has been more mis- 
understood or misapplied — than my strong 
assertion, that the arts can never be right 



Cbe /l&EsterE of Xife ano fits Brts 215 

themselves, unless their motive is right. It is 
misunderstood this way : weak painters, who 
have never learned their business, and cannot 
lay a true line, continually come to me, crying 
out : " Look at this picture of mine ; it must be 
good, I had such a lovely motive. I have put 
my whole heart into it, and taken years to 
think over its treatment." Well, the only 
answer for these people is — if one had the 
cruelty to make it: "Sir, you cannot think 
over any thing in any number of years, — you 
have n't the head to do it ; and though you had 
fine motives, strong enough to make you burn 
yourself in a slow fire, if only first you could 
paint a picture, you can't paint one, nor half an 
inch of one ; you have n't the hand to do it." 

But, far more decisively we have to say to the 
men who do know their business, or may know 
it if they choose : "Sir, you have this gift and 
a mighty one ; see that you serve your nation 
faithfully with it. It is a greater trust than 
ships and armies: you might cast them away, 
if you were their captain, with less treason to 
your people than in casting your own glorious 



216 Sesame an& Xfltes 

power away, and serving the devil with it in- 
stead of men. Ships and armies you may re- 
place if they are lost, but a great intellect, once 
abused, is a curse to the earth for ever." 

107. This, then, I meant by saying that the 
arts must have noble motive. This also I said 
respecting them, that they never had prospered, 
nor could prosper, but when they had such true 
purpose, and were devoted to the proclamation 
of divine truth or law. And yet I saw also that 
they had always failed in this proclamation — 
that poetry, and sculpture, and painting, though 
only great when they strove to teach us some- 
thing about the gods, never had taught us any 
thing trustworthy about the gods, but had 
always betrayed their trust in the crisis of it, 
and, with their powers at the full reach, became 
ministers to pride and to lust. And I felt also, 
with increasing amazement, the unconquerable 
apathy in ourselves the hearers, no less than in 
these the teachers ; and that, while the wisdom 
and Tightness of every act and art of life could 
only be consistent with a right understanding 
of the ends of life, we were all plunged as in a 



Gbe /Hastens of %itc ano 1Tt8 Brt6 217 

languid dream — our heart fat, and our eyes 
heavy, and our ears closed, lest the inspiration 
of hand or voice should reach us — lest we should 
see with our eyes, and understand with our 
hearts, and be healed. 

108. This intense apathy in all of us is the 
first great mystery of life ; it stands in the way 
of every perception, every virtue. There is no 
making ourselves feel enough astonishment at 
it. That the occupations or pastimes of life 
should have no motive, is understandable ; but 
— That life itself should have no motive ; that we 
neither care to find out what it may lead to, nor 
to guard against its being for ever taken away 
from us — here is a mystery indeed. For, just 
suppose I were able to call at this moment to any 
one in this audience by name, and to tell him 
positively that I knew a large estate had been 
lately left to him on some curious conditions, 
but that, though I knew it was large, I did not 
know how large, nor even where it was — 
whether in the East Indies or the West, or in 
England, or at the Antipodes. I only knew it 
was a vast estate, and that there was a chance 



218 Seeame anfc %iiic6 

of liis losing it altogether if he did not soon find 
out on what terms it had been left to him. 
Suppose I were able to say this positively to any 
single man in this audience, and he knew that 
I did not speak without warrant, do you think 
that he would rest content with that vague 
knowledge, if it were anywise possible to obtain 
more ? Would he not give every energy to find 
some trace of the facts, and never rest till he 
had ascertained where this place was, and what 
it was like? And suppose he were a young 
man, and all he could discover by his best 
endeavor was that the estate was never to be his 
at all unless he persevered during certain years 
of probation in an orderly and industrious life ; 
but that, according to the tightness of his con- 
duct, the portion of the estate assigned to him 
would be greater or less, so that it literally 
depended on his behavior from day to day 
whether he got ten thousand a year, or thirty 
thousand a year, or nothing whatever — would 
you not think it strange if the youth never 
troubled himself to satisfy the conditions in 
any way, nor even to know what was required of 



Gbe jlfogsterE of Xtfe ano 11 ts %ue 219 

iiim, bat lived exactly as lie chose, and never 
inquired whether his chances of the estate were 
increasing or passing away ? Well, you know 
that this is actually and literally so with the 
greater number of the educated persons now 
living in Christian countries. Nearly every 
man and woman, in any company such as this, 
outwardly professes to believe — and a large 
number unquestionably think they believe — 
much more than this ; not only that a quite un- 
limited estate is in prospect for them if they 
please the Holder of it, but that the infinite 
contrary of such a possession — an estate of per- 
petual misery — is in store for them if they 
displease this great Laud-Holder, this great 
Heaven-Holder. And yet there is not one in 
a thousand of these human souls that cares 
to think for ten minutes of the day where this 
estate is, or how beautiful it is, or what kind of 
life they are to lead in it, or what kind of life 
they must lead to obtain it. 

109. You fancy that you care to know this : 
so little do you care that, probably, at this mo- 
ment many of you are displeased with me for 



220 Sesame anO Sillies 

talking of the matter ! You came to hear about 
the Art of this world, not about the Life of the 
next, and you are provoked with me for talking 
of what you can hear any Sunday in church. 
But do not be afraid. I will tell you something 
before you go about pictures, and carvings, and 
pottery, and what else you would like better to 
hear of than the other world. Nay, perhaps 
you say : "We want you to talk of pictures and 
pottery, because we are sure that you know 
something of them, and you know nothing of 
the other world." Well— I don't. That is 
quite true. But the very strangeness and 
mystery of which I urge you to take notice is in 
this — that I do not ; nor you either. Can you 
answer a single bold question unflinchingly 
about that other world — Are you sure there is a 
heaven ? Sure there is a hell ? Sure that men 
are dropping before your faces through the 
pavements of these streets into eternal fire, or 
sure that they are not ? Sure that at your own 
death you are going to be delivered from all 
sorrow, to be endowed with all virtue, to be 
gifted with all felicity, and raised into per- 



Gbe /lft£6ter£ of Xlfe ano ITts arts 221 

petual companionship with a King, compared 
to whom the kings of the earth are as grass- 
hoppers, and the nations as the dust of His 
feet ? Are you sure of this ? or, if not sure, do 
any of us so much as care to make it sure ? and, 
if not, how can any thing that we do be right — 
how can any thing we think be wise ; what 
honor can there be in the arts that amuse us, or 
what profit in the possessions that please ? 

Is not this a mystery of life ? 

no. But farther, you may, perhaps, think it 
a beneficent ordinance for the generality of men 
that they do not, with earnestness or anxiety, 
dwell on such questions of the future ; because 
the business of the day could not be done if this 
kind of thought were taken by all of us for the 
morrow. Be it so : but at least we might antici- 
pate that the greatest and wisest of us, who 
were evidently the appointed teachers of the 
rest, would set themselves apart to seek out 
whatever could be surely known of the future 
destinies of their race ; and to teach this in no 
rhetorical or ambiguous manner, but in the 
plainest and most severely earnest words. 



222 Sesame ant) Xitfes 

Now, the highest representatives of men who 
have thus endeavored, during the Christian era, 
to search out these deep things, and relate them, 
are Dante and Milton. There are none whc 
for earnestness of thought, for mastery of word, 
can be classed with these. I am not at present, 
mind you, speaking of persons set apart in any 
priestly or pastoral office, to deliver creeds to 
us, or doctrines ; but of men who try to discover 
and set forth, as far as by human intellect is 
possible, the facts of the other world. Divines 
may perhaps teach us how to arrive there, but 
only these two poets have in any powerful man- 
ner striven to discover, or in any definite words 
professed to tell, what we shall see and become 
there ; or how those upper anfl nether worlds 
are, and have been, inhabited. 

in. And what have they told us? Milton's 
account of the most important event in his 
whole system of the universe, the fall of the 
angels, is evidently unbelievable to himself; 
and the more so that it is wholly founded on, 
and in a great part spoiled and degraded from, 
Hesiod's account of the decisive war of the 



Gbe /Ifcssterg of Xtte ano fits Brts 223 

younger gods with the Titans. The rest of his 
poem is a picturesque drama, in which every 
artifice of invention is visibly and consciously 
employed ; not a single fact being, for an in- 
stant, conceived as tenable by any living faith. 
Dante's conception is far more intense, and, by 
himself, for the time, not to be escaped from ; 
it is indeed a vision, but a vision only, and that 
one of the wildest that ever entranced a soul, — a 
dream in which every grotesque type or phan- 
tasy of heathen tradition is renewed, and 
adorned ; and the destinies of the Christian 
Church, under their most sacred symbols, be- 
come literally subordinate to the praise, and 
are only to be understood by the aid, of one 
dear Florentine maiden. 

112. I tell you truly that, as I strive more 
with this strange lethargy and trance in my- 
self, and awake to the meaning and power of 
life, it seems daily more amazing to me that 
men such as these should dare to play with the 
most precious truths (or the most deadly un- 
truths), by which the whole human race listen- 
ing to them could be informed, or deceived ;— 



224 Sesame and Xtltes 

all the world their audiences for ever, with 
pleased ear, and passionate heart ; — and yet, to 
this submissive infinitude of souls, and ever- 
more succeeding and succeeding multitude, 
hungry for bread of life, they do but play upon 
sweetly modulated pipes ; with pompous no- 
menclature adorn the councils of hell ; touch a 
troubadour's guitar to the courses of the suns ; 
and fill the openings of eternity, before which 
prophets have veiled their faces, and which 
angels desire to look into, with idle puppets of 
their scholastic imagination, and melancholy 
lights of frantic faith in their lost mortal love. 

Is not this a mystery of life ? 

113. But more. We have to remember that 
these two great teachers were both of them 
warped in their temper, and thwarted in their 
search for truth. They were men of intellec- 
tual war, unable, through darkness of contro- 
versy, or stress of personal grief, to discern 
where their own ambition modified their utter- 
ances of the moral law ; or their own agony 
mingled with their anger at its violation. But 
greater men than these have been — innocent- 



Gbe /l&ssterg of %iic ano 1Tts arts 225 

hearted — too great for contest. Men like Ho 
mer and Shakespeare, of so unrecognized 
personality that it disappears in future ages, 
and becomes ghostly, like the tradition of a 
lost heathen god. Men, therefore, to whose 
unoffended, uncondemning sight, the whole of 
human nature reveals itself in a pathetic weak- 
ness, with which they will not strive ; or in 
mournful and transitory strength, which they 
dare not praise. And all Pagan and Christian 
civilization thus becomes subject to them. It 
does not matter how little, or how much, any 
of us have read, either of Homer or Shake- 
speare ; every thing round us, in substance, or 
in thought, has been moulded by them. All 
Greek gentlemen were educated under Homer. 
All Roman gentlemen, by Greek literature. All 
Italian, and French, and English gentlemen, 
by Roman literature, and by its principles. Of 
the scope of Shakespeare, I will say only that 
the intellectual measure of every man since 
born, in the domains of creative thought, may 
be assigned to him, according to the degree in 
which he has been taught by Shakespeare. 



226 Sesame and Xflfes 

Well, what do these two men, centres of moral 
intelligence, deliver to us of conviction respect- 
ing what it most behooves that intelligence to 
grasp ? What is their hope ; their crown of 
rejoicing? what manner of exhortation have 
they for us, or of rebuke ? what lies next their 
own hearts, and dictates their undying words ? 
Have they any peace to promise to our unrest 
^-any redemption to our misery ? 

114. Take Homer first, and think if there is 
any sadder image of human fate than the great 
Homeric story. The main features in the char 
acter of Achilles are its intense desire of justice, 
and its tenderness of affection. And in that 
bitter song of the Iliad, this man, though aided 
continually by the wisest of the gods, and burn- 
ing with the desire of justice in his heart, be- 
comes yet, through ill-governed passion, the 
most unjust of men ; and, full of the deepest 
tenderness in his heart, becomes yet, through 
ill-governed passion, the most cruel of men. 
Intense alike in love and in friendship, he 
loses, first his mistress, and then his friend ; 
for the sake of the one, he surrenders to death 



Gbe /Ifcgsterg ot Xtte anD ITts Brts 227 

the armies of his own land ; for the sake of the 
other, he surrenders all. Will a man lay down 
his life for his friend ? Yea, even for his dead 
friend, this Achilles, though goddess-born, and 
goddess-taught, gives up his kingdom, his 
country, and his life — casts alike the innocent 
and guilty, with himself, into one gulf of 
slaughter, and dies at last by the hand of the 
basest of his adversaries. 

Is not this a mystery of life ? 

115. But what, then, is the message to us of 
our own poet, and searcher of hearts, after 
fifteen hundred years of Christian faith have 
been numbered over the graves of men ? Are 
his words more cheerful than the heathen's — is 
his hope more near — his trust more sure — his 
reading of fate more happy ? Ah, no ! He 
differs from the Heathen poet chiefly in this— 
that he recognizes, for deliverance, no gods 
nigh at hand; and that, by petty chance— by 
momentary folly — by broken message — by fool's 
tyranny — or traitor's snare, the strongest and 
most righteous are brought to their ruin, and 
perish without word of hope. He indeed, as 



228 Sesame anfc Xiliea 

part of his rendering of character, ascribes the 
power and modesty of habitual devotion, to the 
gentle and the just. The death-bed of Kath- 
arine is bright with vision of angels ; and the 
great soldier-king, standing by his few dead, 
acknowledges the presence of the hand that can 
save alike by many or by few. But observe 
that from those who with deepest spirit medi- 
tate, and with deepest passion mourn, there 
are no such words as these ; nor in their hearts 
are any such consolations. Instead of the per- 
petual sense of the helpful presence of the 
Deity, which, through all heathen tradition, is 
the source of heroic strength, in battle, in 
exile, and in the valley of the shadow of death, 
we find only in the great Christian poet, the 
consciousness of a moral law, through which 
"the gods are just, and of our pleasant vices 
make instruments to scourge us " ; and of the 
resolved arbitration of the destinies, that con- 
clude into precision of doom what we feebly 
and blindly began ; and force us, when our in- 
discretion serves us, and our deepest plots do 
pall, to the confession, that "there 's a divinity 



Gbe d&B6terg of Xtfe ano Uts Btts 229 

that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we 
will." 

Is not this a mystery of life ? 

116. Be it so then. About this human life 
that is to be, or that is, the wise religious men 
tell us nothing that we can trust ; and the wise 
contemplative men, nothing that can give us 
peace. But there is yet a third class, to whom 
we may turn — the wise practical men. We 
have sat at the feet of the poets who sang of 
heaven, and they have told us their dreams. 
We have listened to the poets who sang of 
earth, and they have chanted to us dirges, and 
words of despair. But there is one class of men 
more, — men, not capable of vision, nor sensi- 
tive to sorrow, but firm of purpose, practised 
in business, learned in all that can be (by 
handling) known ; men whose hearts and 
hopes are wholly in this present world, from 
whom, therefore, we may surely learn, at least, 
how, at present, conveniently to live in it. 
What will they say to us, or show us by ex- 
ample? These kings — these councillors — these 
statesmen and builders of kingdoms — these 



230 Sesame anD TLilies 

capitalists and men of business, who weigh the 
earth, and the dust of it, in a balance. They 
know the world, surely ; and what is the mys- 
tery of life to us, is none to them. They can 
purely show us how to live, while we live, and 
to gather out of the present world what is best. 
117. I think I can best tell you their answer, 
by telling you a dream I had once. For though 
I am no poet, I have dreams sometimes: — I 
dreamed I was at a child's May-day party, in 
which every means of entertainment had been 
provided for them, by a wise and kind host. It 
was in a stately house, with beautiful gardens 
attached to it ; and the children had been set 
free in the rooms and gardens, with no care 
whatever but how to pass their afternoon re- 
joicingly. They did not, indeed, know much 
about what was to happen next day ; and some 
of them, I thought, were a little frightened, be- 
cause there was a chance of their being sent to 
a new school where there were examinations ; 
but they kept the thoughts of that out of their 
heads as well as they could, and resolved to en- 
}oy themselves. The house, I said, was in a 



Gbe /l&Esterg of Xife ano 1Tts Brt6 231 

beautiful garden, and in the garden were all 
kinds of flowers ; sweet grassy banks for rest ; 
and smooth lawns for play ; and pleasant 
streams and woods ; and rocky places foi* 
climbing. And the children were happy for a 
little while, but presently they separated them- 
selves into parties ; and then each party de- 
clared it would have a piece of the garden 
for its own, and that none of the others should 
have any thing to do with that piece. Next, 
they quarrelled violently, which pieces they 
would have ; and at last the boys took up the 
thing, as boys should do, "practically," and 
fought in the flower-beds till there was hardly 
a flower left standing ; then they trampled 
down each other's bits of the garden out of 
spite ; and the girls cried till they could cry no 
more ; and so they all lay down at last breath- 
less in the ruin, and waited for the time when 
they were to be taken home in the evening.* 

118. Meanwhile, the children of the house 
had been making themselves happy also in 

* I have sometimes been asked what this means. I 
intended it to set forth the wisdom of men in war eon- 
tending for kingdoms, and what follows to set forth theil 
wisdom in peace, contending for wealth. 



232 Seeame anfc Xilies 

their manner. For them there had been pro- 
vided every kind of in-door pleasures : there 
was music for them to dance to ; and the library 
was open, with all manner of amusing books, 
and there was a museum, full of the most curi- 
ous shells, and animals, and birds ; and there 
was a workshop, with lathes and carpenter's 
tools, for the ingenious boys ; and there were 
pretty fantastic dresses, for the girls to dress 
in ; and there were microscopes, and kaleido- 
scopes ; and whatever toys a child could fancy ; 
and a table, in the dining-room, loaded with 
every thing nice to eat. 

But, in the midst of all this, it struck two or 
three of the more " practical " children, that 
they would like some of the brass-headed nails 
that studded the chairs ; and so they set to work 
to pull them out. Presently, the others, who 
were reading, or looking at shells, took a fancy 
to do the like ; and, in a little while, all the 
children, nearly, were spraining their fingers in 
pulling out brass-headed nails. With all that 
they could pull out they were not satisfied ; and 
then everybody wanted some of somebody's else. 



Gbe /l&EsterE of Xife ano 1Tts Brts 233 

And at last the really practical and sensible 
ones declared that nothing was of any real con- 
sequence, that afternoon, except to get plenty 
of brass-headed nails ; and that the books, and 
the cakes, and the microscopes were of no use 
at all in themselves, but only if they could be 
exchanged for nail-heads. And, at last, they 
began to fight for nail-heads, as the others 
fought for the bits of garden. Only here and 
there, a despised one shrank away into a cor- 
ner, and tried to get a little quiet with a book, 
in the midst of the noise ; but all the practical 
ones thought of nothing else but counting nail- 
heads all the afternoon — even though they knew 
they would not be allowed to carry so much as 
one brass knob away with them. But no — it 
was : " Who has most nails ? I have a hundred, 
and you have fifty ; or, I have a thousand and 
you have two. I must have as many as you 
before I leave the house, or I cannot possibly 
go home in peace." At last they made so much 
noise that I awoke, and thought to myself: 
" What a false dream that is, of children." The 
child is the father of the man, and wiser. Chil- 



234 Sesame anD Xilies 

dren never do such foolish things. Only men 
do. 

119. But there is yet one last class of persons 
to be interrogated. The wise religious men we 
have asked in vain ; the wise contemplative 
men, in vain ; the wise worldly men, in vain. 
But there is another group yet. In the midst 
of this vanity of empty religion — of tragic con- 
templation — of wrathful and wretched ambi- 
tion, and dispute for dust, there is yet one great 
group of persons, by whom all these disputers 
live — the persons who have determined, or have 
had it by a beneficent Providence determined for 
them, that they will do something useful ; that 
whatever may be prepared for them hereafter, or 
happen to them here, they will, at least, deserve 
the food that God gives them by winning it 
honorably ; and that, however fallen from the 
purity, or far from the peace, of Eden, they will 
carry out the duty of human dominion, though 
they have lost its felicity ; and dress and keep 
the wilderness, though they no more can dress 
or keep the garden. 

These — hewers of wood, and drawers oi wa- 



Gbe jflftEsterg of Xife ano 1fts Brts 235 

ter — these bent under burdens, or torn of 
scourges — these, that dig and weave, that plant 
and build ; workers in wood, and in marble, 
and in iron — by whom all food, clothing habi- 
tation, furniture, and means of delight are pro- 
duced, for themselves, and for all men beside ; 
men, whose deeds are good, though their words 
may be few ; men, whose lives are serviceable, 
be they never so short, and worthy of honor, 
be they never so humble : — from these, surely 
at least, we may receive some clear message of 
teaching : and pierce, for an instant, into the 
mystery of life, and of its arts. 

120. Yes ; from these, at last, we do receive a 
lesson. But I grieve to say, or rather — for that is 
the deeper truth of the matter — I rejoice to say 
this message of theirs can only be received by 
joining them, not by thinking about them. 

You sent for me to talk to you of art, and I 
have obeyed you in coming. But the main 
thing I have to tell you is, that art must not 
be talked about. The fact that there is talk 
about it at all, signifies that it is ill done, or 
cannot be done. No true painter ever speaks, 



236 Sesame anO Xflfes 

or ever has spoken, much of his art. The 
greatest speak nothing. Even Reynolds is no 
exception, for he wrote of all that he could not 
himself do, and was utterly silent respecting all 
that he himself did. 

The moment a man can really do his work, 
he becomes speechless about it. All words be- 
come idle to him — all theories. 

121. Does a bird need to theorize about 
building its nest, or boast of it when built ? 
All good work is essentially done that way — 
without hesitation, without difficulty, without 
boasting ; and in the doers of the best, there is 
an inner and involuntary power which approx- 
imates literally to the instinct of an animal — 
nay, I am certain that in the most perfect hu- 
man artists, reason does not supersede instinct, 
but is added to an instinct as much more divine 
than that of the lower animals as the human 
body is more beautiful than theirs ; that a great 
singer sings not with less instinct than the 
nightingale, but with more — only more various, 
applicable, and governable ; that a great archi- 
tect does not build with less instinct than the 



XZbe Abgsterg of Xife anD 1fts Brts 237 

beaver or the bee, but with more — with an in- 
nate cunning of proportion that embraces all 
beauty, and a divine ingenuity of skill that 
improvises all construction. But be that as it 
may — be the instinct less or more than that of 
inferior animals — like or unlike theirs, still the 
human art is dependent on that first, and therj 
upon an amount of practice, of science, and 
of imagination disciplined by thought, which 
the true possessor of it knows to be incom- 
municable, and the true critic of it, inexplicable, 
except through long process of laborious years. 
That journey of life's conquest, in which hills 
over hills, and Alps on Alps arose, and sank, — 
do you think you can make another trace it 
painlessly, by talking ? You can guide us up 
it, step by step, no otherwise — even so, best 
silently. You girls, who have been among the 
hills, know how the bad guide chatters and 
gesticulates, and it is " Put your foot here," 
and " Mind how you balance yourself there " ; 
but the good guide walks on quietly, without a 
word, only with his eyes on you when need is, 
and his arm like an iron bar, if need be. 



238 Sesame anD Xilfes 

122. In that slow way, also, art can be 
taught — if you have faith in your guide, and 
will let his arm be to you as an iron bar when 
need is. But in what teacher of art have you 
such faith ? Certainly not in me ; for, as I told 
you at first, I know well enough it is only be- 
cause you think I can talk, not because you 
think I know my business, that you let me 
speak to you at all. If I were to tell you any 
thing that seemed to you strange, you would 
not believe it, and yet it would only be in tell- 
ing you strange things that I could be of use to 
you. I could be of great use to you — infinite 
use, with brief saying, if you would believe it ; 
but you would not, just because the thing that 
would be of real use would displease you. You 
are all wild, for instance, with admiration of 
Gustave Dore\ Well, suppose I were to tell you 
in the strongest terms I could use, that Gustave 
Dore's art was bad — bad, not in weakness, — not 
in failure, — but bad with dreadful power — the 
power of the Furies and the Harpies mingled, 
enraging, and polluting ; that so long as you 
looked at it, no perception of pure or beautiful 



Gbe flhystevy of %itc nno fits %vts 239 

art was possible for you. Suppose I were to 
tell you that ! What would be the use ? Would 
you look at Gustave Dore less ? Rather more, 
I fancy. On the other hand, I could soon put 
you into good humor with me, if I chose. I 
know well enough what you like, and how to 
praise it to your better liking. I could talk to 
you about moonlight, and twilight, and spring 
flowers, and autumn leaves, and the Madonnas 
of Raphael — how motherly ! and the Sibyls of 
Michael Angelo — how majestic ! and the Saints 
of Angelico — how pious ! and the Cherubs of 
Correggio — how delicious ! Old as I am, I 
could play you a tune on the harp yet, that you 
would dance to. But neither you nor I should 
be a bit the better or wiser ; or, if we were, our 
increased wisdom could be of no practical 
effect. For, indeed, the arts, as regards teach- 
ableness, differ from the sciences also in this, 
that their power is founded not merely on facts 
which can be communicated, but on dispositions 
which require to be created. Art is neither to 
be achieved by effort of thinking, nor explained 
by accuracy of speaking. It is the instinctive 



240 Sesame anD Xiltes 

and necessary result of powers which can only 
be developed through the inind of successive 
generations, and which finally burst into life 
under social conditions as slow of growth as the 
faculties they regulate. Whole eras of mighty 
history are summed, and the passions of dead 
myriads are concentrated, in the existence of a 
noble art ; and if that noble art were among us, 
we should feel it and rejoice ; not caring in the 
least to hear lectures on it ; and since it is not 
among us, be assured we have to go back to the 
root of it, or, at least, to the place where the 
stock of it is yet alive, and the branches began 
to die. 

123. And now, may I have your pardon for 
pointing out, partly with reference to matters 
which are at this time of greater moment than 
the arts — that if we undertook such recession to 
the vital germ of national arts that have de- 
cayed, we should find a more singular arrest of 
their power in Ireland than in any other Euro- 
pean country. For in the eighth century, 
Ireland possessed a school of art in her manu- 
scripts and sculpture, which, in many of its 



Gbe flfcgsters of Xffe anD 1Fts Brts 241 

qualities — apparently in all essential qualities of 
decorative invention — was quite without rival ; 
seeming as if it might have advanced to the 
highest triumphs in architecture and in paint- 
ing. But there was one fatal flaw in its nature, 
by which it was stayed, and stayed with & 
conspicuousness of pause to which there is no 
parallel : so that, long ago, in tracing the 
progress of European schools from infancy to 
strength, I chose for the students of Kensing- 
ton, in a lecture since published, two character- 
istic examples of early art, of equal skill ; but 
in the one case, skill which was progressive — in 
the other, skill which was at pause. In the one 
case, it was work receptive of correction — hun- 
gry for correction — and in the other, work 
which inherently rejected correction. I chose 
for them a corrigible Eve, and an incorrigible 
Angel, and I grieve to say that the incorrigible 
Angel was also an Irish angel ! * 

124. And the fatal difference lay wholly in 
this. In both pieces of art there was an equal 
falling short of the needs of fact ; but the Lorn- 
* See " The Two Paths," p. 27. 



242 • Sesame anfc Mies 

bardic Eve knew she was in the wrong, and the 
Irish Angel thought himself all right. The 
eager Ivombardic sculptor, though firmly insist- 
ing on his childish idea, yet showed in the 
irregular broken touches of the features, and 
the imperfect struggle for softer lines in the 
form, a perception of beauty and law that he 
could not render ; there was the strain of effort, 
under conscious imperfection, in every line. 
But the Irish missal-painter had drawn his 
angel with no sense of failure, in happy com- 
placency, and put red dots into the palms of 
each hand, and rounded the eyes into perfect 
circles, and, I regret to say, left the mouth out 
altogether, with perfect satisfaction to himself. 
125. May I without offence ask you to con- 
sider whether this mode of arrest in ancient 
Irish art may not be indicative of points of 
character which even yet, in some measure, 
arrest your national power ? I have seen much 
of Irish character, and have watched it closely, 
for I have also much loved it. And I think the 
form of failure to which it is most liable is this, 
that being generous-hearted, and wholly in- 



Gbe flbyetexy of Xtfe ano ITts Brts 243 

tending always to do right, it does not attend 
to the external laws of right, but thinks it must 
necessarily do right because it means to do so, 
and therefore does wrong without finding it 
out ; and then when the consequences of its 
wrong come upon it, or upon others connected 
with it, it cannot conceive that the wrong is in 
anywise of its causing or of its doing, but flies 
into wrath, and a strange agony of desire for 
justice, as feeling itself wholly innocent, which 
leads it farther astray, until there is nothing 
that it is not capable of doing with a good 
conscience. 

126. But mind, I do not mean to say that, m 
past or present relations between Ireland and 
England, you have been wrong, and we right. 
Far from that, I believe that in all great ques- 
tions of principle, and in all details of adminis- 
tration of law, you have been usually right, and 
we wrong ; sometimes in misunderstanding you> 
sometimes in resolute iniquity to you. Never- 
theless, in all disputes between states, though 
the strongest is nearly always mainly in the 
throng, the weaker is often so in a minor 



244 Sesame anfc Xttfes 

degree ; and I think we sometimes admit the 
possibility of our being in error, and you never 
do. 

127. And now, returning to the broader ques- 
tion, what these arts and labors of life have to 
teach us of its mystery, this is the first of their 
lessons — that the more beautiful the art, the 
more it is essentially the work of people who 
feel themselves wrong : — who are striving for 
the fulfilment of a law, and the grasp of a love- 
liness, which they have not yet attained, which 
they feel even farther and farther from attaining 
the more they strive for it. And yet, in still 
deeper sense, it is the work of people who know 
also that they are right. The very sense of 
inevitable error from their purpose marks the 
perfectness of that purpose, and the continued 
sense of failure arises from the continued 
opening of the eyes more clearly to all the 
sacredest laws of truth. 

128. This is one lesson. The second is a very 
plain, and greatly precious one, namely : that 
whenever the arts and labors of life are ful- 
filled in this spirit of striving against misrule, 



Gbe /Hasten? of %itc ant) flts Brts 245 

&nd doing whatever we have to do, honorably 
and perfectly, they invariably bring happiness, 
as much as seems possible to the nature of man. 
In all other paths, by which that happiness is 
pursued, there is disappointment, or destruc- 
tion : for ambition and for passion there is no 
rest — no fruition ; the fairest pleasures of youth 
perish in a darkness greater than their past 
light ; and the loftiest and purest love too often 
does but inflame the cloud of life with endless 
fire of pain. But, ascending from lowest to 
highest, through every scale of human industry, 
that industry, worthily followed, gives peace. 
Ask the laborer in the field, at the forge, or in 
the mine ; ask the patient, delicate-fingered 
artisan, or the strong-armed, fiery-hearted 
worker in bronze, and in marble, and with the 
colors of light ; and none of these, who are 
true workmen, will ever tell you, that they 
have found the law of heaven an unkind one — 
that in the sweat of their face they should eat 
bread, till they return to the ground ; nor that 
they ever found it an unrewarded obedience, if, 
indeed, it was rendered faithfully to the com- 



246 Sesame anD Xtlles 

mand: "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do 
—do it with thy might." 

129. These are the two great and constant 
lessons which our laborers teach us of the mys- 
tery of life. But there is another, and a sadder 
one, which they cannot teach us, which we 
must read on their tombstones. 

"Do it with thy might." There have been 
myriads upon myriads of human creatures who 
have obeyed this law — who have put every 
breath and nerve of their being into its toil — 
who have devoted every hour, and exhausted 
every faculty — who have bequeathed their un- 
accomplished thoughts at death — who, being 
dead, have yet spoken, by majesty of memory, 
and strength of example. And, at last, what 
has all this "Might" of humanity accom- 
plished, in six thousand years of labor and 
sorrow ? What has it done ? Take the three 
chief occupations and arts of men, one by one, 
and count their achievements. Begin with the 
first — the lord of them all — agriculture. Six 
thousand years have passed since we were set 
to till the ground, from which we were taken. 



Gbe ttsvetety of %\U ano 1Tts mte 247 

How much of it is tilled ? How much of that 
which is wisely or well ? In the very centre 
and chief garden of Europe — where the two 
forms of parent Christianity have had their 
fortresses — where the noble Catholics of the 
Forest Cantons, and the noble Protestants of 
the Vaudois valleys, have maintained, for date- 
less ages, their faiths and liberties — there the 
unchecked Alpine rivers yet run wild in devas- 
tation ; and the marshes, which a few hundred 
men could redeem with a year's labor, still 
blast their helpless inhabitants into fevered 
idiotism. That is so, in the centre of Europe ! 
While, on the near coast of Africa, once the 
Garden of the Hesperides, an Arab woman, 
but a few sunsets since, ate her child, for 
famine. And, with all the treasures of the 
East at our feet, we in our dominion, could 
not find a few grains of rice, for a people 
that asked of us no more ; but stood by, and 
saw five hundred thousand of them perish of 
hunger. 

130. Then, after agriculture, the art of kings, 
take the next head of human arts — weaving ; 



248 Sesame and Xilies 

the art of queens, honored of all noble Heathen 
women, in the person of their virgin goddess- 
honored of all Hebrew women, by the word 
of their wisest king — "She layeth her hands 
to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff; 
she stretcheth out her hand to the poor. She 
is not afraid of the snow for her household, for 
all her household are clothed with scarlet. 
She maketh herself covering of tapestry, her 
clothing is silk and purple. She maketh fine 
linen, and selleth it, and delivereth girdles to 
the merchant." What have we done in all 
these thousands of years with this bright art of 
Greek maid and Christian matron ? Six thou- 
sand years of weaving, and have we learned to 
weave ? Might not every naked wall have been 
purple with tapestry, and every feeble breast 
fenced with sweet colors from the cold ? What 
have we done ? Our fingers are too few, it 
seems, to twist together some poor covering 
for our bodies. We set our streams to work for 
us, and choke the air with fire, to turn our 
spinning-wheels — and, — are we yet clothed? 
Are not the streets of the capitals of Europe 



Gbe /IfcssterE of %itc ano irts Brts 249 

foul with the sale of cast clouts and rotten 
rags ? Is not the beauty of your sweet chil- 
dren left in the wretchedness of disgrace, while, 
with better honor, nature clothes the brood of 
the bird in its nest, and the suckling of the 
wolf in her den ? And does not every winter's 
snow robe what you have not robed, and shroud 
what you have not shrouded ; and every win- 
ter's wind bear up to heaven its wasted souls, 
to witness against you hereafter, by the voice 
of their Christ, — "I was naked, and ye clothed 
me not?" 

131. Lastly — take the art of building — the 
strongest — proudest — most orderly — most en- 
during of the arts of man, that, of which the 
produce is in the surest manner accumulative, 
and need not perish, or be replaced; but if 
once well done, will stand more strongly than 
the unbalanced rocks — more prevalently than 
the crumbling hills. The art which is asso= 
ciated with all civic pride and sacred principle ; 
with which men record their power — satisfy 
their enthusiasm — make sure their defence- 
define and make dear their habitation. And, 



250 Sesame anD 'JLtliee 

in six thousand years of building, what have 
we done ? Of the greater part of all that skill 
and strength, no vestige is left, but fallen stones, 
that encumber the fields and impede the 
streams. But, from this waste of disorder, and 
of time, and of rage, what is left to us ? Con- 
structive and progressive creatures that we 
are, with ruling brains, and forming hands, 
capable of fellowship, and thirsting for fame, 
can we not contend, in comfort, with the in- 
sects of the forest, or, in achievement, with the 
worm of the sea ? The white surf rages in vain 
against the ramparts built by poor atoms of 
scarcely nascent life ; but only ridges of form- 
less ruin mark the places where once dwelt our 
noblest multitudes. The ant and the moth 
have cells for each of their young, but our 
little ones lie in festering heaps, in homes that 
consume them like graves ; and night by night, 
from the corners of our streets, rises up the cry 
of the homeless — "I was a stranger, and ye 
took me not in." 

132. Must it be always thus ? Is our life for 
ever to be without profit — without possession ? 



Gbe /iRgsterE of Xlfe ano 1Tts Brts 251 

Shall the strength of its generations be as 
barren as death ; or cast away their labor, as 
the wild fig-tree casts her untimely figs ? Is it 
all a dream then — the desire of the eyes and the 
pride of life — or, if it be, might we not live 
in nobler dream than this ? The poets and 
prophets, the wise men, and the scribes, though 
they have told us nothing about a life to come, 
have told us much about the life that is now. 
They have had — they also, — their dreams, and 
we have laughed at them. They have dreamed 
of mercy, and of justice ; they have dreamed 
of peace and good-will ; they have dreamed of 
labor undisappointed, and of rest undisturbed ; 
they have dreamed of fulness in harvest, and 
overflowing in store ; they have dreamed of 
wisdom in council, and of providence in law ; 
of gladness of parents, and strength of children, 
and glory of grey hairs. And at these visions 
of theirs we have mocked, and held them for 
idle and vain, unreal and unaccomplishable. 
What have we accomplished with our realities? 
Is this what has come of our worldly wisdom, 
tried against their folly? this our mightiest 



252 Sesame anD Xilfes 

possible, against their impotent ideal ? or have 
we only wandered among the spectra of a baser 
felicity, and chased phantoms of the tombs, 
instead of visions of the Almighty ; and walked 
after the imaginatioi is of our evil hearts, instead 
of after the councils of Eternity, until our lives 
— not in the likeness of the cloud of heaven, 
but of the smoke of hell — have become "asa 
vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then 
vanish eth away " ? 

133. Does it vanish then ? Are you sure of 
that ? — sure, that the nothingness of the grave 
will be a rest from this troubled nothingness ; 
and that the coiling shadow, which disquiets 
itself in vain, cannot change into the smoke 
of the torment that ascends for ever ? Will any 
answer that they are sure of it, and that there 
is no fear, nor hope, nor desire, nor labor, 
whither they go ? Be it so ; will you not, then v 
make as sure of the Life that now is, as you are 
of the Death that is to come ? Your hearts are 
wholly in this world — will you not give them to 
it wisely, as well as perfectly? And see, first 
of all, that you have hearts, and sound hearts, 



Gbe dfc£6ter£ of %ttc ano *ffts Brts 253 

too, to give. Because you have no heaven to 
look for, is that any reason that you should re- 
main ignorant of this wonderful and infinite 
earth, which is firmly and instantly given you 
in possession ? Although your days are num- 
bered, and, the following darkness sure, is it 
necessary that you should share the degradation 
of the brute, because you are condemned to its 
mortality ; or live the life of a moth, and of the 
worm, because you are to companion them in 
the dust ? Not so ; we may have but a few thou- 
sands of days to spend, perhaps hundreds only 
— perhaps tens ; nay, the longest of our time 
and best, looked back on, will be but as a 
moment, as the twinkling of an eye ; still, we 
are men, not insects ; we are living spirits, not 
passing clouds. "He maketh the winds His 
messengers ; the momentary fire, His min- 
ister" ; and shall we do less than these? Let 
us do the work of men while we bear the form 
of them ; and, as we snatch our narrow portion 
of time out of Bternity, snatch also our narrow 
inheritance of passion out of Immortality — 
even though our lives be as a vapor, that ap- 



254 Sesame anfc XUfes 

peareth for a little time, and then vanishetb 
away. 

134. But there are some of you who believe 
not this — who think this cloud of life has no 
such close — that it is to float, revealed and 
illumined, upon the floor of heaven, in the day 
when He cometh with clouds, and every eye 
shall see Him. Some day, you believe, within 
these five, or ten, or twenty years, for every 
one of us the judgment will be set, and the 
books opened. If that be true, far more than 
that must be true. Is there but one day of 
judgment? Why, for us every day is a day 
of judgment — every day is a Dies Irae, and 
writes its irrevocable verdict in the flame of its 
West. Think you that judgment waits till the 
doors of the grave are opened ? It waits at the 
doors of your houses — it waits at the corners 
of your streets ; we are in the midst of judgment 
— the insects that we crush are our judges — the 
moments we fret away are our judges — the ele= 
ments that feed us, judge, as they minister — 
and the pleasures that deceive us, judge, as they 
indulge. Let us, for our lives, do the work 



Gbe /ifcgsters of Xife arts fits Hrts 255 

of Men while we bear the Form of them, if in- 
deed those lives are Not as a vapor, and do Not 
vanish away. 

135. "The work of men," and what is that? 
Well, we may any of us know very quickly, on 
the condition of being wholly ready to do it. 
But many of us are for the most part thinking, 
not of what we are to do, but of what we are to 
get ; and the best of us are sunk into the sin of 
Ananias, and it is a mortal one— we want to 
keep back part of the price ; and we continually 
talk of taking up our cross, as if the only harm 
in a cross was the weight of it — as if it was only 
a thing to be carried, instead of to be— crucified 
upon. " They that are His have crucified the 
flesh, with the affections and lusts." Does that 
mean, think you, that in time of national 
distress, of religious trial, of crisis for every 
interest and hope of humanity — none of us 
will cease jesting, none cease idling, none put 
themselves to any wholesome work, none take 
so much as a tag of lace off their footman's 
coat, to save the world? Or does it rather 
mean, that they are ready to leave houses, 



256 Sesame anfc Xitiee 

lands, and kindreds — yes, and life, if need be ? 
Life ! — some of us are ready enough to throw 
that away, joyless as we have made it. But 
"station in Life " — how many of us are ready 
to quit that? Is it not always the great objec 
tion, where there is question of finding some 
thing useful to do — " We cannot leave ou, 
stations in life " ? 

Those of us who really cannot — that is to 
say, who can only maintain themselves by 
continuing in some business or salaried office, 
have already something to do; and all that 
they have to see to, is that they do it honestly 
and with all their might. But with most people 
who use that apology, " remaining in the 
station of life to which Providence has called 
them," means keeping all the carriages, and 
all the footmen and large houses they can 
possibly pay for ; and, once for all, I say that 
if ever Providence did put them into stations 
of that sort — which is not at all a matter of 
certainty — Providence is just now very dis- 
tinctly calling them out again. Levi's station 
in life was the receipt of custom ; and Peter's, 



Gbe fltostene of Xife anD Hts arts -57 

the shore of Galilee; and Paul's, the ante- 
chambers of the High Priest, — which " station 
in life " each had to leave, with brief notice. 

And, whatever our station in life may be, at 
this crisis, those of us who mean to fulfil our 
duty ought, first, to live on as little as we can ; 
and, secondly, to do all the wholesome work 
for it we can, and to spend all we can spare in 
doing all the sure good we can. 

And sure good is first in feeding people, then 
in dressing people, then in lodging people, and 
lastly in rightly pleasing people, with arts, or 
sciences, or any other subject of thought. 

136. I say first in feeding ; and, once for all, 
do not let yourselves be deceived by any of 
the common talk of " indiscriminate charity." 
The order to us is not to feed the deserving 
hungry, nor the industrious hungry, nor the 
amiable and well-intentioned hungry, but 
simply to feed the hungry. It is quite true, 
infallibly true, that if any man will not work, 
neither should he eat — think of that, and every 
time you sit down to your dinner, ladies and 
gentlemen, say solemnly, before you ask a 



258 Sesame and Xllles 

blessing: "How much work have I done to- 
day for my dinner?" But the proper way to 
enforce that order on those below you, as well 
as on yourselves, is not to leave vagabonds and 
honest people to starve together, but very dis- 
tinctly to discern and seize your vagabond ; 
and shut your vagabond up out of honest peo- 
ple's way, and very sternly then see that, until 
he has worked, he does not eat. But the first, 
thing is to be sure you have the food to give ; 
and, therefore, to enforce the organization of 
vast activities in agriculture and in commerce, 
for the production of the wholesomest food, 
and proper storing and distribution of it, so 
that no famine shall any more be possible 
among civilized beings. There is plenty of 
work in this business alone, and at once, for 
any number of people who like to engage in it. 
137. Secondly, dressing people — that is to 
say, urging every one within reach of youi 
influence to be always neat and clean, and 
giving them means of being so. In so far as 
they absolutely refuse, you must give up the 
effort with respect to them, only taking care 



Hbe /Hesters of Xife anfc 1Tt6 Brtg 2gg 

that no children within your sphere of influence 
shall any more be brought up with such habits ; 
and that every person who is willing to dress 
with propriety shall have encouragement to do 
so. And the first absolutely necessary step 
towards this is the gradual adoption of a con- 
sistent dress for different ranks of persons, so 
that their rank shall be known by their dress ; 
and the restriction of the changes of fashion 
within certain limits. All which appears for 
the present quite impossible ; but it is only so 
far as even difficult as it is difficult to conquer 
our vanity, frivolity, and desire to appear what 
we are not. And it is not, nor ever shall be, 
creed of mine, that these mean and shallow 
vices are unconquerable by Christian women. 

138. And then, thirdly, lodging people, 
which you may think should have been put 
first, but I put it third, because we must feed 
and clothe people where we find them, and 
lodge them afterwards. And providing lodg- 
ment for them means a great deal of vigorous 
legislature, and cutting down of vested interests 
that stand in the way, and after that, or before 



*6o Sesame an& %\lie& 

that, so far as we can get it, thorough sanitary 
and remedial action in the houses that we have ; 
and then the building of more, strongly, beauti- 
fully, and in groups of limited extent, kept in 
proportion to their streams, and walled round, 
so that there may be no festering and wretched 
suburb anywhere, but clean and busy street 
within, and the open country without, with a 
belt of beautiful garden and orchard round the 
walls, so that from any part of the city perfectly 
fresh air and grass, and sight of far horizon 
might be reachable in a few minutes' walk. 
This the final aim ; but in immediate action 
every minor and possible good to be instantly 
done, when, and as, we can ; roofs mended that 
have holes in them — fences patched that have 
gaps in them— walls buttressed that totter — and 
floors propped that shake ; cleanliness and or- 
der enforced with our own hands and eyes, till 
we are breathless, every day. And all the fine 
arts will healthily follow. I myself have washed 
a flight of stone stairs all down, with bucket 
and broom, in a Savoy inn, where they had n't 
washed their stairs since they first went up 



Zbe Itsyetety of %itc ano 1Tts arts 261 

them ; and I never made a better sketch than 
that afternoon. 

139. These, then, are the three first needs of 
civilized life ; and the law for every Christian 
man and woman is, that they shall be in direct 
service towards one of these three needs, as far 
as is consistent with their own special occupa- 
tion, and if they have no special business, then 
wholly in one of these services. And out of 
such exertion in plain duty all other good will 
come ; for in this direct contention with ma- 
terial evil, you will find out the real nature of 
all evil ; you will discern by the various kinds 
of resistance, what is really the fault and main 
antagonism to good ; also you will find the 
most unexpected helps and profound lessons 
given, and truths will come thus down to us 
which the speculation of all our lives would 
never have raised us up to. You will find 
nearly every educational problem solved, as 
soon as you truly want to do something ; every- 
body will become of use in their own fittest 
way, and will learn what is best for them to 
know in that use. Competitive examination 



562 Sesame anfc Xtltes 

will then, and not till then, be wholesome, 
because it will be daily, and calm, and in prac- 
tice ; and on these familiar arts, and minute, 
but certain and serviceable, knowledges, will be 
surely edified and sustained the greater arts 
and splendid theoretical sciences. 

140. But much more than this. On such 
holy and simple practice will be founded, in- 
deed, at last, an infallible religion. This great- 
est of all the mysteries of life, and the most 
terrible, is the corruption of even the sincerest 
religion, which is not daily founded on ration- 
al, effective, humble, and helpful action. Help- 
ful action, observe ! for there is just one law, 
which, obeyed, keeps all religions pure — for- 
gotten, makes them all false. Whenever in 
any religious faith, dark or bright, we allow 
our minds to dwell upon the points in which 
we differ from other people, we are wrong, and 
in the devil's power. That is the essence of 
the Pharisee's thanksgiving — " I/>rd, I thank 
thee that I am not as other men are." At 
every moment of our lives we should be trying 
to find out, not in what we differ with other 



Gbe /Hester*? of Xlfe anfc ITts Brts 263 

people, but in what we agree with them ; and 
the moment we find we can agree as to any 
thing that should be done, kind or good, (and 
who but fools could n't ?) then do it ; push at it 
together ; you can't quarrel in a side-by-side 
push ; but the moment that even the best men 
stop pushing, and begin talking, they mistake 
their pugnacity for piety, and it 's all over. I 
will not speak of the crimes which in past 
times have been committed in the name of 
Christ, nor of the follies which are at this hour 
held to be consistent with obedience to Him ; 
but I will speak of the morbid corruption and 
waste of vital power in religious sentiment, by 
which the pure strength of that which should 
be the guiding soul of every nation, the splen- 
dor of its youthful manhood, and spotless light 
of its maidenhood, is averted or cast away. You 
may see continually girls who have never been 
taught to do a single useful thing thoroughly — 
who cannot sew, who cannot cook, who cannot 
cast an account, nor prepare a medicine, whose 
whole life has been passed either in play or in 
pride ; you will find girls like these, when they 



#>4 Sesame anfc Xiltes 

are earnest-hearted, cast all their innate passion 
of religious spirit, which was meant by God to 
support them through the irksomeness of daily- 
toil, into grievous and vain meditation over the 
meaning of the great Book, of which no sylla- 
ble was ever yet to be understood but through 
a deed ; all the instinctive wisdom and mercy 
of their womanhood made vain, and the glory 
of their pure consciences warped into fruitless 
agony concerning questions which the laws of 
common serviceable life would have either 
solved for them in an instant, or kept out of 
their way. Give such a girl any true work that 
will make her active in the dawn, and weary at 
night, with the consciousness that her fellow- 
creatures have indeed been the better for her 
day, and the powerless sorrow of her enthu- 
siasm will transform itself into a majesty of 
radiant and beneficent peace. 

So with our youths. We once taught them 
to make Latin verses, and called them edu- 
cated ; now we teach them to leap and to row, 
to hit a ball with a bat, and call them educated. 
Can they plow, can they sow, can they plant at 



Gbe /I&ssterE f %ifc anfc 1Tt8 Brta 265 

the right time, or build with a steady hand? 
Is it the effort of their lives to be chaste, 
knightly, faithful, holy in thought, lovely in 
word and deed ? Indeed it is, with some, nay 
with many, and the strength of England is in 
them, and the hope ; but we have to turn their 
courage from the toil of war to the toil of 
mercy ; and their intellect from dispute of 
words to discernment of things ; and their 
knighthood from the errantry of adventure to 
the state and fidelity of a kingly power. And 
then, indeed, shall abide, for them and for us, 
an incorruptible felicity, and an infallible reli- 
gion ; shall abide for us Faith, no more to be 
assailed by temptation, no more to be defended 
by wrath and by fear ; shall abide with us 
Hope, no more to be quenched by the years 
that overwhelm, or made ashamed by the 
shadows that betray ; shall abide for us, and 
with us, the greatest of these— the abiding will, 
the abiding name, of our Father. For the 
greatest of these, is Charity. 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proces 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: May 2009 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATIO 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 





014 525 189 8 



